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ESSAYS. 


MISCELLANEOUS 


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BY THE 

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REV. WILLIAM KIRKUS, LL.B. 

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SECOND EDITION. 


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LONDON: 

LONGMANS, GREEN, READER, & DYER. 

1869. 





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CONTENTS 


i 


SATIRE. 

FROUDE’s ELIZABETH.. 

CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 

MODEL SERMONS ........ 

RITUALISM. 

ROMANISM, ANGLICANISM, AND EVANGELICALISM LOGICALLY 
IDENTICAL ......... 

LECKYS “ RATIONALISM IN EUROPE ”. 

THE NEW REFORMATION. 

MR. JOHN STUART MILL. 


1 

37 

67 

103 

153 

205 

237 

281 

326 










ON SATIRE.* 


“ Answer not a fool according to liis folly, lest thou also 
he like unto him.” “ Answer a fool according to his 
folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit.”! These are 
two contradictory proverbs, which are to be found side 
by side in a venerable book with which all Englishmen 
are supposed to be peculiarly familiar. They furnish a 
good example both of the value of proverbs, and of their 
complete inadequacy as rules of life. A proverb is the 
expression of a very wide experience ; an experience so 
wide that it is in a measure common to a whole people, 
or even to the whole human race. But not the whole 
life of any individual, much less the experience of 
hundreds of millions of mankind, separated from one 
another by enormous intervals both of. space and time, 
can ever be condensed into a single sentence. A man’s 
life, in almost every sense, is a heap of contradictions, 
a long series of conflicts, a daily death, and a perpetual 
new birth. And when men come to live together, the 
moral permutations and combinations which become 
possible are absolutely innumerable. Among these 

t 

combinations, unfortunately, it is possible to find fools. 

# “ Victoria Magazine,” July, 18(55. 

f Proverbs xxvi. 4, 5. 

B 


2 


ON SATIRE. 


mingled with wise men, and needing to be dealt with 
in whatever way may be best. How, then, shall a wise 
man answer a fool ? We find, in actual fact, that people 
shape their conduct according to one or other of the two 
contradictory proverbs already quoted. There are men 
who laugh at folly till they themselves become almost 
incapable of perceiving that it is anything worse than a 
joke. There are others who spend their utmost wisdom 
in gravely answering absurdities, and utterly refuting 
preposterous nonsense, which a mere laugh might 
shatter to pieces in a moment. We are not likely to 
win, in our battle either with folly or vice, unless we are 
prepared to accept both the proverbs just quoted, as 
indicating the behaviour required and justified by a 
long and wide experience. There are times, in short, 
when flippancy must be rebuked by solemn gravity ; and 
there are times when the lightest jest would be sufficient 
for its discomfiture. And so in literature there is a 
place for grave books on law and ethics, for treatises on 
the highest good, and the great end of human life ; and 
there is room also for comedy and satire. 

It is difficult to imagine any time in the history of 
man when comedy and satire had no existence ; except, 
perhaps, that probably short period which was spent by 
our first parents in the garden of Eden. The perfection 
of that primaeval state, if just a little monotonous, 
must have excluded those vanities which are the proper 
object of laughter and scorn. At any rate, if Mr. 
Carlyle be right, and if the very vices of mankind are 
essentially only different kinds of clothes, the satirist 
could have had no message for creatures so entirely 
unsophisticated as Adam and Eve. And yet no sooner 
does sin enter into the world than satire comes along with 


ON SATIRE. 


3 


it; and there is a wondrous irony, a hitter scorn of that 
tremendous loss which Adam and Eve believed so surely 
would be an immeasurable gain, in the few simple words, 
“ They knew that they were naked.” There is a comic 
side even of the worst sins ; every sort of evil is quite 
out of joint; and there must always have been men 
who were capable of perceiving this, and who tried to 
cure or punish vice and folly by laughing them out of 
countenance. But as a department of literature, both 
comedy and satire, which are very nearly akin, are • 
among the latest results of civilization. They imply 
an artificial life, which renders it extremely easy for 
people to seem what they are not; a state of society in 
which etiquette becomes of more importance than good 
manners ; in which the free utterance of a man’s genuine 
feelings is forbidden as coarse and vulgar; and in which 
therefore all manner of affectations abound on every 
side. It is not quite easy to determine whether satire 
preceded comedy or grew out of it; but whatever their 
history may be, they are in nature related to each other 
almost as epic poetry is related to tragedy. Epic poetry 
is descriptive, and as it were historical; but tragedy is the 
imitation of actual life. The tragedian does not relate 
how men have fought or suffered ; he makes them fight 
or suffer before our very eyes. He does not dissect his 
characters, and show us their various motives, but he 
permits us to listen to what they say, and to see what 
they do, and so to ascertain for ourselves what they 
really are. In like manner,' comedy is the playful 
representation of real life. It accomplishes that moral 
purpose which all good comedy has, by actually exhibit¬ 
ing to us that grotesque and contemptible behaviour 
which we always despise and ridicule whenever we are 

b 2 


4 


ON SATIRE. 


in a position impartially to judge it. Satire, on the 
other hand, is more directly didactic; it dissects cha¬ 
racter instead of representing it in action. It does not 
suffer the Tain man simply to exhibit liis vanity to us, 
that more in mirth than anger we may laugh him to 
scorn ; but it takes him apart, and strips off, one after 
another, all his showy disguises, till his deformity is 
before us in its utter nakedness, and we thrust him 
aw r ay with execrations. 

For obvious reasons, w r e find the masterpieces of 
ancient comedy among the Greeks, and the master¬ 
pieces of satire among the Romans. The gravity of the 
Romans was more adverse than Greek decorum to 
histrionic performances ; and this is an aversion with 
which the English character can very thoroughly 
sympathise. It is impossible not to admire a good 
actor; and it is impossible not to perceive how r much 
genius and labour, how much pow r er akin to the poet’s 
owm, are necessary to histrionic perfection. But there 
are very few Englishmen of good education and easj T 
circumstances, who would consent to be even first-rate 
actors. There seems to be something undignified in 
the dresses, the attitudes, the false colours and lights, 
the feigned passion, and the innumerable unrealities of 
the stage. And yet this feeling may spring, not from 
the superior strength and solidity, but from the far 
inferior versatility of English character. We are for 
ever haunted by a self-consciousness which forbids a 
hearty abandonment to innocent and healthy pleasure ; 
and which nothing seems able to control but money¬ 
making and religion. Nay, even our religion itself is 
far too subjective, far more the expression of what we 
think ive are towards God, than of what we believe God 



ON SATIRE. 


5 


is towards us. Even in its public exercises, in the 
devotion of Christian congregations, an Englishman can 
scarcely kneel to pray without remembering that his 
attitude may be [ungainly, and that somebody behind 
may be laughing at him. Or, again, in a very different 
region of life, most young people enjoy dancing; and 
probably no exercise is more pleasurable, so long as it is 
genuine dancing. But it may be doubted whether more 
than very few young men are capable of forgetting them¬ 
selves enough to be made happy by so graceful and 
fascinating an amusement. Apart, moreover, from the 
solidity and reticence of Roman character, which were 
unfavourable to the full development of comedy, the 
political relations of Rome were far less elastic than 
those of Greece. The Roman watchword was “order,” 
the Greek was “freedom.” It could not be permitted 
in a well-ordered society, that chief citizens should be 
made the laughing-stock of any crowd of idlers. In 
fact, dignity is less easily killed even by crime than by 
derision. 

But, on the other hand, religion is the chief leveller; 
in the sight of the gods all men are alike, in their 
exceeding smallness. Again, they are alike to the divine 
mercy and care. 

“ Carior est illis homo quam sibi.” 

The chief festivals, therefore, of the more powerful 
divinities were seasons of licence—“ liberty, equality, 
fraternity ”—and above all, the god Dionysus required 
of his worshippers that they should revel in his gifts 
with boisterous, grateful, self-forgetting mirth. The 
worship of this god has, indeed, passed through all 
stages of debasement, till Bacchus has become the 


6 


ON SATIRE. 


symbol of a worse than beastly sottishness. But he 
was not such in the beginning. On the contrary, it is, 
in a manner, to him that we owe those masterpieces ol 
ancient wisdom and genius which have survived the 
wreck of civilisation itself, and floated safely over the 
deluge by which the old world was overwhelmed. That 
quick perception and ardent love of the beautiful by 
which the Greeks were distinguished, and the liveliness 
of their temperament, preserved them from the dreadful 
excesses of cruelty and lust which disgraced the Roman 
Bacchanalia. But when all men are suddenly reduced 
to one level, and permitted to address one another with 
unrestrained freedom, it is quite impossible to guarantee 
that the control of good feeling, or even common justice, 
will supply the place of the ordinary restraints of law. 
The scurrilous songs of the festive chorus, which gave 
place at a later period to comedy itself, were full of 
unmeasured invective and unpardonable libel; which, 
in fact, characterised Athenian comedy so long as it 
retained sufficient wit and spirit to be worth regard. 

“ Never, probably,” says Mr. Grote,* “will tlie full and un¬ 
shackled force of comedy be so exhibited again. Without having 
Aristophanes actually before us, it would have been impossible 
to imagine the unmeasured and unsparing licence of attack 
assumed by the old comedy upon the gods, the institutions, the 
politicians, philosophers, poets, private citizens specially named— 
and even the women, whose life was entirely domestic—of 
Athens.” 

With the loss of political freedom the Athenians 
suffered also the loss of that literary liberty which they 
had so recklessly abused. From that time Greek comedy 
lost its spirit and worth; it was at once too dramatic 

* “ Greece,” viii. 450, (1850.) 


ON SATIRE. 


7 


to be genuine satire, and too satirical to be genuine 
drama. Greece enslaved could accomplish no more of 
those literary achievements which were in fact the very 
offspring of liberty ; and from the time of the loss of 
her independence it was only her ever living past which 
ruled the thought of the world. 

The licence granted by the great religious festivals, 
and the love of jest and banter inherent in human 
nature itself, found their best literary expression among 
the Romans, not in comedy (for reasons already alluded 
to) but in satire ; and the satires of Horace, Persius, 
and Juvenal, are still unrivalled. Our English satirists 
have done little else, and nothing better, than imitate 
them ; while, perhaps, none of them has reached the 
moral earnestness of Juvenal. Horace (whom Persius, 
both in style and moral purpose, closely resembles) is 
the representative of those who good-humouredly casti¬ 
gate the smaller vices and inconvenient follies of man¬ 
kind. Indeed, he was far more a polished gentleman 
than a poet, beautiful though many of his poems are. 
They have more of good taste, exquisite neatness, 
perfect finish, than of real genius, or depth of emotion, 
or wealth of imagination. His choice of epithets is 
marvellously felicitous ; they are never vulgar, coarse, 
exaggerated. No heat of passion makes him forget 
the reticence of good breeding. And so, in his satires, 
he looks at vice as unbefitting a well-bred gentleman ; 
as a rude, unmannerly impertinence. His rebukes 
would scarcely touch the evil-doers; they were too 
delicate and refined. He was no match for the inso¬ 
lence of wickedness. He could caricature, for the 
amusement of his friends, the oddities, the follies, 
even the vices of his age; but his weapon was no way 


8 


ON SATIRE. 


sharp enough to pierce the thick, tough hide of fools 
and knaves. He seems unconsciously to reappear in 
almost every satire as he shows himself in the ninth 
of the first Book—sauntering along the Via Sacra, 
pestered by a forward coxcomb whose intrusive inso¬ 
lence he was too gentlemanly to resent; or again, as 
in the first of the second Book—writing because he 
must write, because somehow he couldn’t sleep if he 
didn’t. Even if he seems to forget himself in un¬ 
wonted sternness, he is more vexed with himself than 
with those whom his lashes have hurt; and he writes 
a satire, which is scarcely satirical at all, to show how 
necessary it is to put up with people as we find them, 
and to make allowance for one another. “ Deal with 
your friends’ faults,” he says, “ as mothers do with the 
deformities of their children; call them by soft, sweet 
names. Let the close be called thrifty; the silly man 
who is a little too prone to boast, say he is anxious to 
please ; the rude and off-handed, say he is natural and 
manly ; the passionate, high-spirited. This is the way 
to make friends and to keep them.” If a man can 
scarcely open his mouth without uttering some villanous 
lie, say “ all his geese are swans.” If he is an arrant 
coward, call him prudent. So will the awkward rough¬ 
nesses of life be smoothed down, and human fellowship 
be made easy and agreeable. So it will, indeed; but the 
man who could write thus has missed the true, or at 
any rate the highest, aim of satire. Horace was no 
great teacher of morality—he was too much afraid of 
being thought ungenerous, fault-finding, censorious ; a 
most real danger, to which everyone will find himself 
exposed who tries to mend the mischief which he sees 
around him. He frankly acknowledges that he wrote 


ON SATIRE. 


9 


not for the many, but for the little circle of his refined 
and cultivated friends. Moreover, his intimate friend¬ 
ship with Maecenas, and those yet more illustrious men 
to whom the patronage of Maecenas was an easy intro¬ 
duction, may have taught him to regard with a sort of 
toleration those follies which were rapidly becoming 
very dangerous vices. It is impossible to conceive of a 
lower degradation than for a great ’and powerful nation 
to be sunk in such undiscriminating luxury that the 
highest enjoyment of its chief men becomes scarcely 
better than a refinement of gluttony. Perhaps this 
vice had in the time of Horace scarcely begun to attract 
the attention of even thoughtful men ; just as in private 
life we may become aware that our friends have an eager 
relish for the pleasures of the table, long before we per¬ 
ceive that the flesh is utterly subduing the spirit, and 
changing the man into an animal. But by the time of 
Juvenal, gluttony had become one of the most con¬ 
temptible and even dangerous vices of the Roman 
people. Horace, however, was more at home when 
satirising in his gentlemanly way the airs of those rich, 
vulgar men who imagine themselves capable of giving 
an entertainment to choice spirits, simply because they 
can afford to buy delicate viands and hire skilful cooks. 
He was unspeakably amused by watching the mingled 
impudence and cowardice of that sort of people ; their 
affectation of equality with their guests, continually 
discomfited by their complete knowledge of their own 
meanness. It is at once painful and amusing to reflect 
as you sit at table, that your host is the very meanest 
piece of furniture that his house contains. In fact, 
Horace is the representative of one of the two classes 
into which satirists may be divided, and Juvenal is the 


10 


ON SATIRE. 


representative of the other. The one is the satirist of 
folly ; the other the satirist of vice. 

“ Juvenal liad to deal with vice and folly more than a century 
older than the vice and folly of Horace’s day, and a tyranny 
which Horace never witnessed. The playful personalities of 
Horace did not suit Juvenal’s subject, and would not have repre¬ 
sented his way of viewing it, nor did they suit the severe and 
defiant spirit in which he approached it.” * 

The morality of Juvenal is so pure and stern, that 
some have almost persuaded themselves that he was a 
Christian. It was less “technical” than that of 
Horace. It was not the virtue of a gentleman, hut of 
an earnest, upright man. It regarded vice not as a 
folly that might he laughed at, nor as a ridiculous 
breach of good manners, hut as an unspeakable base¬ 
ness, destroying the true life of an individual and the 
peace of society. Indeed, that any Roman could have 
contemplated the moral condition of his nation in the 
time of Juvenal without loathing and terror, would have 
been utterly incredible, except for the far more terrible 
wonder that Romans could have been found .guilty of 
those vices which Juvenal lashes with such unsparing 
severity. The growing wealth of our own country, its 
ever-increasing luxuries and refinements, its cessation 
from all plans of conquest, its principle of non-inter¬ 
vention in those noble quarrels which at any rate are 
more heroic than gluttony and lust, its almost absolute 
security from the attacks of foreign enemies; these and 
many other causes are combining to enable us to under¬ 
stand that rottenness of civilisation by which the Roman 
Empire was cursed. There is probably not a single 
vice satirised by Juvenal which might not be discovered 

* Macleane’s “ Juvenal.” (Bibl. Class.) Introduction. 


ON SATIRE. 


11 


in London itself: but as yet, at any rate, the vices of 
our own day are content to pay to virtue the tribute of 
hypocrisy. The vices of Rome in the time of Juvenal 
were utterly shameful and obtrusive. 

The degradation of women was at once the effect and 
the far more fruitful cause of every other degradation. 

“ Surely you once were sane,” says Juvenal to Postumus, in 
his sixth Satire, “ are you really going to marry a wife ? what 
fury is it that is driving you mad ? are you really going to 
submit to one of these she-tyrants, while there are so many ropes 
left in the world by which you might hang yourself; when there 
are so many windows high enough to make you giddy, from which 
you may throw yourself down; when you can so easily plunge 
from the iEmilian bridge into the river?” 

And then there follows that scorching satire which 
leaves us no room to wonder why the Roman Empire 
should have been broken in pieces. 

“ Eastern impostures and Greek debauchery,” says Mr. Mac- 
leane, hi his introduction to the sixth Satire, “ very quickly took 
root in the soil of Rome, and brought forth the fruits of a ram¬ 
pant superstition and profligacy, especially among women; and 
these two were so mingled, that the very shrines which cherished 
the one were the shameless scenes of the other. Extravagance, 
without generosity, and driven on by mad lust, bred covetousness; 
and covetousness, murder; so that poisonings were frequent and 
notorious. The conditions of domestic slavery gave terrible scope 
for 'the caprices and violence which self-indulgence generates: 
and the sufferings of the poor wretches from the ill-temper of 
them mistresses is described in language which has the air of 
extravagance, but may nevertheless be accepted as true, not only 
from the testimony of other writers, but from the nature of the 
case, the known character of the women, the legal and social 
position of the slave, and, moreover, the experience (perhaps in 
more exceptional cases) of modern times. The love of personal 
display, of finery, of gossip, of public amusements, and the 
affectation of learning, and pride of birth, and the self-com¬ 
placency of virtue, are strongly put, but not more so than the 



12 


ON SATIRE. 


present generation might readily bear. Gluttony and drunken¬ 
ness are not commonly reckoned among women’s failings, but 
they appear to have been prevalent in the time of Domitian. 
The folly which is, perhaps, most inexplicable, and without 
parallel in our own days, was that of women of family engaging 
in the arena, and practising as gladiators, hunters, charioteers, 
and so forth, in the circus and amphitheatre. That such was 
the madness of the time there is no doubt; and it forms one of. 
the many monstrous features of this satire, in which there are 
no traces of those crimes which are usually associated with the 
nobler passions in women, jealousy, disappointed love, ambition ; 
but all is grovelling, depraved, and despicably mean.”* 

Juvenal scourges with equal energy those smaller 
vices which, less dangerous in themselves, are un¬ 
happily unmistakeable signs of worse and more fatal 
mischiefs. He exposes, for instance, in the fifth Satire, 
that beggarly servility which characterised the parasites 
of his time. There were men in Rome too idle even 
to beg, who exhausted all the contrivances of their 
ingenuity in securing an invitation to dine with some 
wealthy citizen. The race of parasites is not even yet 
extinct, nor, unhappily, is that race of Virros upon 
whom parasites feed. There are stupid people enough 
who are for ever clinging to the skirts of greatness, and 
who almost seem able to persuade themselves that mere 
local proximity to worth is actual worthiness. To stand 
on the platform of a railway station while the Queen 
passes by in an express train, seems to fools of this sort 
to constitute a kind of intimacy with the royal family. 
It you had never spoken a word to a nobleman, there 
are powdered flunkeys who would look down upon you 
with a kind of contemptuous pity, because, forsooth, 
they had blacked the boots of a duke, or carried a stick 
with a gold knob behind the back of a duchess. But 

* Macleane’s “Juvenal,” Sat. VI. Introduction. 


ON SATIRE. 


13 


there is a flunkeyism in everybody. There are many 
men, not without ability, who could be bribed to change 
their social or political opinions for the honour of form¬ 
ing part of a deputation to some great man. The 
servility that prostrates itself before mere rank or 
fortune, is a servility fatal to all nobleness, not only in 
the slave, but in the master. The man must he mean 
indeed who thinks the rank that parasites could give 
worth taking. 

The best known of JuvenaTs Satires is the tenth. 
It is not, perhaps, the best of them, but it is less than 
any of the others bounded by those peculiar conditions 
of time and place in which Juvenal wrote. It is, there¬ 
fore, most capable of imitation, and has been not 
unsuccessfully imitated in our own language by Dr. 
Samuel Johnson. Examples of the vanity of human 
wishes are to be found all over the world. Perhaps the 
prayers of mankind are among the most woful proofs 
of their ignorance and blindness; and it is the most 
singular blessing of Heaven that the larger half of the 
passionate entreaties of human beings are utterly unre¬ 
garded. The close of the tenth Satire of Juvenal is 
surely written not without some Divine inspiration; 
it is so full of reverence, so full of submission to the 
Divine will; so full of trust in that heavenly wisdom 
which doeth all things well, and yet so full of that filial 
confidence which must tell its griefs and wants to 
Heaven, out of that pure love which can keep no secrets 
from the loving Father of all. 

“ Are then,” asks the poet, “ frail short-sighted men to wish 
for nothing ? If you mil take my advice, you will leave the gods 
themselves to bestow what is best for us, what is really for our 
highest good. Not always what is pleasantest, but everything 


14 


ON SATIRE. 


that is really best, the gods will give us. Man is dearer to them 
than to himself. We, led astray by the heat of passion, and strong 
blind lust, desire marriage and children ; but to the gods only is 
it known what sort of woman would be our wife, and what sort 
of boys our sons. But if you must vow your vows, and pray for 
anything, pray that you may have a healthy mind and a healthy 
body; ask for a stout heart, free from the dread of death, count¬ 
ing the last end of life among the good gifts • of nature, with 
power to bear all its appointed toils; a soul that is free from 
angry passions and from covetous desires, and that believes the 
labours and hard toils of Hercules nobler than lust, and appetite, 
and luxury.”* 

It is far beyond the limits of this short essay to give 
anything like a history of satire, Roman or English. 
Unhappily our English satirists were scarcely themselves 
so far exalted above the vices they lashed, as ever to 
approach the nobleness and perfect honesty of Juvenal. 
Some of them are playful like Horace ; and even those 
who hold up to scorn the more dangerous vices of man¬ 
kind, seem sometimes to have caught the infection that 
men can scarcely escape who are in familiar intercourse 
with the deadliest sins. There is a taint of impurity 
even in their rebukings of the impure. They sometimes 
almost remind their reader of Byron’s stupid jest about 
the “Confessions” of St. Augustine, that “they make 
the reader envy his transgressions.” It is impossible to 
believe in the complete sincerity of such a man as Swift, 
whose works contain more unredeemed dirtiness than 
can easily be found anywhere else in the whole English 
language; simple filth, without a spark of wit, or moral 
purpose. Even of Dryden and Pope, it is often neces¬ 
sary to remember the words of Holy Scripture, “the 
scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat; all there- 


* Juvenal X. 340-362. 



ON SATIRE. 


15 


fore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and 
do ; but do not ye after their works, for they say, and do 
not.”* The age of poetical satire, however, seems to 
have passed awa}-, and the satirists of our own time are 
to be found chiefly among the writers of fiction. Men, 
indeed, will never cease to laugh at what is ridiculous, 
and to deride what is contemptible; but now, instead of 
satirists, we have what may perhaps be called satirical 
writers ; such, for instance, as Mr. Carlyle, whose his¬ 
tories even, and much more his miscellaneous essays and 
lectures, contain a rich vein of satire. Mr. Thackeray, 
again, and Mr. Charles Dickens, and almost every 
novelist whose tales are worth a second reading, not only 
describe the manners and characters of men, but also 
castigate their vices and mock their follies They are, in 
fact, notwithstanding their reputation for worldliness, 
among our best lay teachers; and not seldom they ad¬ 
minister to powerful and shameless evil-doers those 
stern rebukes which even ordained priests and ministers 
of religion have not the courage to utter. 

But of course the question arises, whether, after all, 
satire should be considered one of the lawful weapons 
that a kind and honest man may use in his war with 
evil ? Why should he make himself disagreeable, and 
those whom he attacks unhappy or savage ? The knaves 
and fools of the world are perhaps doing no great harm 
to him; why not let them alone, to reap in due time 
according as they have sown ? Have not even satirists 
themselves told us that the worst torment a wicked man 
can know is inflicted by his own conscience ? Is anyone 
justified in satirising his neighbours, stripping them 
absolutely bare of all their little hypocrisies, pricking all 

* Matthew xxiii. 2 , 3. 


16 


ON SATIRE. 


the inflated bladders of their conceit, and holding up 
their little shriveled insignificance for all the world to 
grin at ? Is a man justified in doing all this, without 
some grave provocation ? Perhaps Pope may give us the 
answer to some, at least, of these questions. 

“ Ask you wliat provocation I have had ? 

The strong antipathy of good to bad. 

When truth or virtue an affront endures, 

Th’ affront is mine, my friend, and should be yours. 
Mine, as a foe professed to false pretence, 

Who think a coxcomb’s honour like his sense ; 

Mine, as a friend to every worthy mind, 

And mine as man, who feel for all mankind. 

F. You’re strangely proud. 

P. So proud, I am no slave, 

So impudent, I own myself no knave, 

So odd, my country’s ruin makes me grave.— 

Yes, I am proud; I must be proud to see 
Men, not afraid of God, afraid of me; 

Safe from the Bar, the Pulpit, and the Throne, 

Yet touched and shamed by ridicule alone.” 

It is quite impossible to have a sufficient contempt for 
that mean and cowardly selfishness, which blinds a man 
to every vice which does not endanger his own safety or 
rob his own purse. If the satirist be asked, “ Why do 
you write these stinging, burning words which are sure 
to inflict a thousand wounds that time can never heal ? 
Why do you make men look so exceedingly small, and 
rob them of the paltry comfort of imposing on tliem- 
I selves ? Why do you drag Pharisees out into the broad 
daylight, and sign them with the mark of the beast ? ” 
Then he may surely answer, “ I do all this, and I write 
all this, because it is true and right; because a Pharisee 
is a detestable and dangerous humbug; because the more 
< he cants and snivels, the more detestable and dangerous 


ON SATIRE. 


17 


lie is. I will not, if I can help it, suffer anybody to im- \ 
pose upon himself; because he never can cheat himself 
without intentionally or unintentionally robbing others, 
without pushing himself into places for which he is not 
fit, and thereby pushing others out of places for which 
they are fit. I will laugh at folly as long as I have life 
enough 'to laugh with, because it has neither wit nor 
beauty, because in the end it never fails to mar genuine 
mirth, because it is sure to break up every happy fellow¬ 
ship, and to put all human relationships miserably out of 
joint. Do you tell me that the hornets will sting me ? 
Let them sting. I shall at least have the satisfaction of 
giving them something to sting for. I can, at any rate, 
destroy their nest, and help to stamp the next generation 
of them out of existence ; and no sting has half so much 
venom, as the consciousness of being a miserable coward 
or a contemptible flunkey.” That, we may be sure, is 
something like the answer that a satirist might be ex¬ 
pected to give. 

Moreover, there are many follies and vices which can 
be punished in no other way than by the whips of the 
satirist. There are wrongs which are, strictly speaking, 
neither civil injuries nor crimes; which, nevertheless, are 
quite as fraudulent as thieving, and quite as cruel as 
murder. Indeed, there are wrongs so compounded of 
fraud and cruelty, that they are as bad as murder and 
theft put together. When, for instance, the accom¬ 
plished proprietor of Dotheboys’ Hall advertised in the 
Times newspaper, Morning Post, Chronicle, Herald, 
and Advertiser, regarding the academy at the delightful 
village of Dotheboys, near Greta Bridge, in Yorkshire, 
where youth are boarded, clothed, booked, washed, fur¬ 
nished with pocket-money, provided with all necessaries, 

c 


18 


ON SATIRE. 


&c., &c.; nobody needs to be informed that the worthy 
Squeers was lying; and that every confiding parent who 
entrusted his child to the kindness and scholarship of 
that renowned pedagogue, was simply swindled. 'But 
there was no law that Wackford Squeers, Esq., could be 
proved to have broken ; his roguery did not come within 
the legal definition of fraud, or obtaining money under 
false pretences. So, again, when brimstone and treacle 
was administered to the boys weekly, and the spoon 
wiped on the hair of the smallest, with a view to di¬ 
minish at once the appetite of the boarders and the do¬ 
mestic expenses of the establishment, and to produce a 
sweet submissiveness of disposition in the junior pupils, 
it is plain to the meanest capacity that the authorities 
of Dotheboys’ Hall were slowly killing the young gentle¬ 
men who were entrusted to their care. But though un¬ 
doubtedly breaking the sixth commandment, Mr. Squeers 
was no way guilty of committing murder. So Mr. 
Charles Dickens bethought him of a number of laws, 
which do not happen to be contained in the “ statutes 
at large,” but which, nevertheless, are guarded by 
sanctions and enforced by penalties that not even a Squeers 
can afford to despise. He simply exhibited the York¬ 
shire schoolmaster in his real character—his double, his 
many-sided character. There was Squeers the adver¬ 
tiser, the accomplished instructor of youth, the tender 
parent, the faithful adviser, the sage guide of boyhood in 
the paths of virtue and wisdom; and then there was 
Squeers at home, exchanging confidences with his wife, 
and training up his children in the way in which they 
should go. In fact, Squeers was allowed to explain 
himself to society at large; and until that measure of 
justice had been meted out to him, nobody could have 


ON SATIRE. 


19 


believed how great was the versatility of his genius, and 
the copiousness of his resources. It is, of course, some¬ 
times a little inconvenient to say everything we mean to 
anybody who chooses to ask us for it; it is generally a 
far more shrewd arrangement to divide our different reve¬ 
lations among the different classes of society; appropria¬ 
ting, for instance, the advertisement side of our character 
to the parent, while we reserve the domestic confidences 
for the pupil. Now Mr. Charles Dickens did neither more 
nor less than take down the parents to the delightful village 
of Dotheboys, on days when they were by no means ex¬ 
pected—brimstone and treacle days, frozen water days, 
distribution of pocket-money days, general thrashing 
days—and the result was exceedingly damaging to Mr. 
Squeers’ finances and general reputation. It caused 
acute suffering to the tender-hearted schoolmaster, and 
very probably even damaged the matrimonial prospects 
of the charming Fanny. But how else was the York- 
shire-school nuisance to be abated? Was Mr. Dickens 
to appeal to Mr. Squeers’ sense of honour, to his love 
of learning, to his paternal fondness for the innocent 
children committed to his care ? Was he to refer him 
to his advertisement, and meekly suggest that possibly a 
way might be discovered of bringing the performance 
somewhat nearer to the magnificent promises which the 
advertisement set forth ? Of course, no such plan could 
have been adopted. Mr. Wackford Squeers was one of 
those pachydermatous brutes whom no gentle treatment 
can affect; you might as well flog a rhinoceros with a 
lady’s riding-whip. He couldn’t be hanged, though 
hanging would have been too good for him; he couldn’t 
be put in gaol for theft, though he more than deserved it. 
But there was one thing which could be done ; Mr. 

c 2 


20 


ON SATIRE. 


Charles Dickens could paint his portrait; he could take 
every trustful parent down to the delightful village of 
Dotheboys, and introduce them to Mr. Squeers’ academy ; 
and that was quite enough. Just show the cloven foot, 
and he must he a poor fool indeed who dops not recognise 
the Devil! 

Nor need we in the least distress ourselves lest justice 
too ample, and chastisement too severe, should have 
been dealt out to this unhappy scoundrel. We might 
have been afraid that education itself would have 
been rendered almost impossible, and that too timid 
schoolmasters might have shrunk altogether from 
the responsibility and danger of their position ; that even 
upright and competent teachers would have been kept 
back from that path of usefulness which seemed already 
thronged with impostors and knaves. No fear could be 
more groundless ; you might as well hesitate to tread on 
a slug, or crush a caterpillar, lest those interesting races 
should become extinct. Somehow or other, in this 
puzzling world, the nastiest and filthiest of animals 
always increase with the most terrible fecundity. So far 
from having destroyed the whole race of educational 
scamps, somehow or other the cliopping-up of Mr. 
Squeers has produced exactly the same effect that is pro¬ 
duced by the chopping-up of some of the lower animals 
into bits. Each littfe bit gets a head and tail of its own, 
and so the individual becomes a large family. Scores of 
academies are advertised in the daily papers, with un¬ 
blushing impudence and gigantic mendacity, which can¬ 
not be less odious than Dotheboys’ Hall. They only 
take care to keep more completely on the safe side of the 
law, and to administer refined torture instead of heavy 
blows. They are like those murderers who kill, not by 


ON SATIRE. 


21 


beating in tbe heads of their victims with bludgeons, but 
by sticking long, thin, sharp, steel needles into their 
victims’ ears and poking them about in the brains. Does 
any human being out of Bedlam believe that Middlesex 
is so totally different from Yorkshire, that in London 
and its suburbs, for the trumpery remuneration of £15 
per annum, a child can be instructed in all the branches 
of learning, kept comfortably warm by day and night, fed 
with nutritious food and plenty of it, and enjoy all the 
comforts of a happy home ? Yes, of course, all the 
comforts of a happy home ! All the dainties and de¬ 
lights of Pandaemonium ! And at any rate, let us do 
justice even to those who seem least to deserve it. If 
there is little to eat, and nothing to learn, there is at 
any rate piety, and the strictest attention to the morals 
of the pupils. 

To take another example. How shall men deal with 
such folly and vice as Mr. Thackeray satirises in “Vanity 
Fair”? Do clergymen imagine that they can preach 
down the vanities of the great world ? and by mere 
pulpit eloquence persuade the rising generation of 
Becky Sharpes, that “ this world is all a fleeting show, 
for man’s illusion given ” ? If they do, they possess 
an inexhaustible fund of enjoyment; for next to really 
succeeding, there is perhaps no pleasure so comfortable 
as to believe that you are succeeding. Young ladies and 
gentlemen may be very devout at prayers and very 
demure at sermon-time, but they do not for that reason 
make their ministers their father confessors. There 
are little sly wickednesses which they contrive to perpe¬ 
trate in spite of all their Sunday propernesses. Staunch 
old puritans are continually lamenting that the great 
gulf that separates the Church from the world is already 


22 


ON SATIRE. 


crossed by innumerable bridges; and that, wliat with 
the free and easy manners of piety, and the greatly 
improved behaviour of sin, they are almost as like one 
another as two peas. The little deceptions which are 
practised every day in the most religious families are a 
sufficient proof that there are evils which grave dis¬ 
courses and solemn warnings can never touch. Besides, 
the moral effect of punishment is greatly diminished, 
when the moralist has only one punishment for all 
degrees and kinds of offences. What can you do with 
the smaller vices of the world, when you have nothing 
else to threaten them with but everlasting damnation ? 
Of course it is all very well and true, in a way; but if 
the choice is to lie between being damned for playing 
at “ beggar my neighbour ” and being let off altogether, 
the chances are that we shall be let off. To the philo¬ 
sophy of the Stoics, all sins and all vices may be alike. 
They are by no means alike to common sense. There 
is a very great part of every-day life with which, possibly, 
the pulpit need never meddle ; there is a great number of 
the enjoyments of life, innocent amusements and relaxa¬ 
tions, which are mere necessaries of life in an age and 
country like ours. But, somehow or other, religion is 
too often supposed to cover every occupation but prayer 
and psalm-singing with gloom and danger ; and, there¬ 
fore, young people naturally enough try to cut off one 
great piece of their life from religion altogether. A 
little, quiet whist party, for instance, is startled by the 
sudden announcement of the favourite divine of the 
family. What is really to be done in so terrible a 
difficulty? Do they think whist-playing wrong ? Of 
course they don’t, or else they wouldn’t play it. Even 
mamma doesn’t think it wrong; for while cards are 


23 


ON SATIRE. 

shuffled and dealt, and in the excitement of tricks and 
rubbers, she can keep awake as long as the merriest of 
her daughters. But then the parson would be shocked, 
or at least he might think it necessary to pretend that 
he was; and besides, cards are one thing and parsons 
are another, and it is a great pity to jumble them 
together, till your very minister perhaps might turn out 
a jack or a deuce. So what is to be done? How is 
your esteemed friend to be welcomed ? Why of course 
you will pay him the compliment of throwing a little 
dust into his reverend eyes. You will shuffle all your 
cards away into a work-basket, cover them over with 
stockings or baby linen, and betake yourself to pious 
conversation, or whatever may turn up handiest. Or 
why not all rise together in the eager affection of a 
welcome, and totally forget what you were just doing 
in the great joy of seeing him ? You can very easily 
relieve your minds when he has gone, and begin a new 
rubber if you can’t remember where the last left off. 
But how hot these little accidents make one, and what 
a pity it is that piety should so often have to tell lies 
for the sake of example ! 

Besides, if the pulpit had more influence than it 
really has upon regular church and chapel goers, it is 
all too obvious that the inhabitants of Vanity Fair are 
not by any means the most regular attendants at public 
worship. Indeed, it may almost be affirmed that, in 
this world at any rate, they are almost completely incor¬ 
rigible, and can be converted neither by sermon nor 
by satire. The delights and miseries of a merely 
fashionable life are like the delights and miseries of 
intemperance. The successes that are achieved by 
people like Becky Sharpe, and all the joys and triumphs 


24 


ON SATIRE. 


of that world into which she managed to thrust herself, 
are hated even while they are loved. Though they are 
eagerly pursued, it is in spite of the knowledge that 
when they have been obtained, they will only bring new 
disappointments and fresh bondage. A thousand times 
over does the victim of fashion wish, as Becky did, 
though in a lazy half-hearted sort of way, that she 
could live somewhere a quiet kind of life, with all her 
wants and luxuries supplied, and without the necessity 
of that everlasting scheming and trickery which is at 
once the occupation and the torment of a selfish, worldly 
life. “ ‘ It isn’t difficult to be a country gentleman’s 
wife,’ Rebecca thought. ‘ I think I could be a good 
woman if I had five thousand a year. I could dawdle 
about in the nursery, and count the apricots on the wall. 
I could water plants in a green-house, and pick off dead 
leaves from geraniums. I could ask old women about 
their rheumatisms, and order half-a-crown’s worth of 
soup for the poor. I shouldn’t miss it much out of 
five thousand a year. I could even drive out ten miles 
to dine at a neighbour’s, and dress in the fashions of 
the year before last. I could go to church and keep 
awake in the great family pew; or go to sleep behind 
the curtains, with my veil down, if I only had practice. 
I could pay everybody if I had but the money. This is 
what the conjurors here pride themselves upon doing. 
They look down with pity upon us miserable sinners 
who have none. They think themselves generous if 
they give our children a five-pound note, and us con¬ 
temptible if we are without one.’ And who knows 
but Rebecca was right in her speculations, and that it 
was only a question of money, or fortune, which made 
the difference between her and an honest woman ? If 


ON SATIRE. 


25 


you take temptations into account, who is to say that he 
is better than his neighbour ? A comfortable career of 
prosperity, if it does not make people honest, at least 
keeps them so. An alderman coming from a turtle' 
feast will not step out of his carriage to steal a leg of 
mutton; hut put him to starve* and see if he will not 
purloin a loaf. Becky consoled herself by so balancing 
the chances, and equalizing the distribution of good and 
evil in the world. 

“ The old haunts, the old fields and woods, the copses, 
ponds, and gardens, the rooms of the whole house 
where she had spent a couple of years seven years 
ago, were all carefully revisited by her. She had been 
young there, or comparatively so, for she forgot the 
time when she ever was young; but she remembered 
her thoughts and feelings seven years back, and 
contrasted them with those she had at present, now 
that she had seen the world, and lived with great 
people and raised herself far beyond her original 
humble station. 

“ ‘ I have raised myself beyond it because I have 
brains,’ Becky thought, ‘and almost all the rest of the 
world are fools. I could not go back, and consort with 
those people now, whom I used to meet in my father’s 
studio. Lords come up to my door with stars and 
garters, instead of poor artists with screws of tobacco 
in their pockets. I have a gentleman for my husband, 
and an Earl’s daughter for my sister, in the very house 
where I was little better than a servant a few years ago. 
But am I much better to do now in the world than 
when I was the poor painter’s daughter, and wheedled 
the grocer round the corner for sugar and tea ? Suppose 
I had married Francis, who was so fond of me, I couldn’t 


26 


ON SATIRE. 


have been much poorer than I am now. Heiglio ! I 
wish I could exchange my position in society, and all 
my relations, for a snug sum in the Three per Cent. 
Consols; ’ for so it was that Becky felt the vanity of 
human affairs, and it was in those securities that she 
would have liked to cast anchor.” 

But, unhappily, there is a fascination even in trickery 
itself, a wild excitement in over-reaching people, in 
fooling them to the top of their bent, making a profit 
out of their petty vanities and easy credulity. The 
chase becomes even more delightful than the game; 
and those who unfortunately have given themselves up 
to the pursuit of success which can only be achieved by 
hypocrisy—and especially those who by hypocrisy have 
actualty achieved success—can very seldom be saved 
excepting by being ruined. 

The good done by such moralists as Mr. Thackeray, 
is done to the people who are outside Vanity Fair, and 
probably very seldom to those who are in it. The famous 
little “ Becky puppet, so uncommonly flexible in the 
joints, and lively on the wire,” utters its warnings 
chiefly to those who sometimes half wish that they 
could change places with her. Mr. Thackeray helps 
such people to understand what a Becky Sharpe really 
is; and what was the exact price that she had to pay 
for her brilliant successes. A large capital well man¬ 
aged can always be made to yield large profits, even 
though the capital itself be nothing better than impu¬ 
dence. Inexhaustible resources of mendacity, and an 
effrontery that never hesitates and is never known to 
blush, can live almost as easily on nothing a year, as 
on the fortune of a millionaire. It is not people like 
Becky Sharpe who fail; it rs the “poor devils ” who 







ON SATIRE. 


27 


are simply unfortunate, who are too honest deliberately to 
lie and swindle, and whose honesty seems to do them 
no better service than publish to all the world when 
they are hard up. Then, for the unhappy carcase, all 
the eagles gather together. Poor fool! Such an one 
little knows the ways of the world, nor what a capital 
price the devil will pay even in these times to any one 
who does not mind selling his soul. A man in diffi¬ 
culties should never retrench, he should always double 
his expenditure! If he can’t pay the rent of a small 
house, he should take a large one ; if he can’t afford 
a quiet brougham and one horse, he should buy a car¬ 
riage and pair, and hire an extra flunkey. “ The Prince 
of Darkness is a gentleman,” and will have nothing to 
do with shabby establishments. 

“ Just pay my debts,” says some unhappy mortal, 
“ that is my one great desire, the only favour I would 
ask of you.” 

“ Pay your debts,” says Satan, “ nothing of the sort! 
I never do things by halves ! You shall have a princely 
establishment, an equipage that a nobleman might envy; 
servants to wait upon you at every turning; success in 
every little practical joke you may wish to perpetrate ; 
every miserable beggar that now duns you, licking the 
soles of your feet with devout gratitude ; and an intro¬ 
duction to the very cream of society. As to the settle¬ 
ment of our little account, it can of course be deferred 
from time to time for a trifling interest, and it will be 
quite time enough to think about that when you grow 
tired of my favours.” 

Now a parson would hesitate to put that sort of thing 
into a sermon, and yet it might be as edifying as a dis¬ 
course on the final perseverance of an elect ragamuffin. 


28 


ON SATIRE. 


It may be a very useful exercise to determine how many 
angels could stand on the point of a needle ; hut people 
who are in danger of yielding to the temptations of 
Vanity Fair don’t care a bit of cotton whether it’s one 
or a million. 

It is surely unnecessary to prove that the people whom 
satire is meant to lash can be punished in no other way. 
This is proved by the very fact that they need satirising. 
For all manner of different methods have been employed 
for their amendment, and even to prevent the necessit} 7 of 
their ever needing to be amended, before they have arrived 
at that particular stage of evil and mischievousness when 
chastisement becomes necessary. They have heard 
sermons, they have been presented with tracts, they 
have been surrounded with good examples, they have 
been surrounded by almost equally instructive bad 
examples; appeals have been made to their reason, 
appeals have been made to their conscience, appeals 
have been made even to their enlightened self-interest; 
and really there seems nothing left to be appealed to, 
excepting, so to speak, their skin. Let them then be 
well whipped with heavy thongs, or with little bits of 
knotted whipcord, as the case may require. And why 
whip them at all ? does somebody ask. Why not let 
them alone? For the very simple reason that no human 
being can be let alone. You can no more let a human 
being alone, than you can let the middle joint of your 
linger alone. It is always fastened to the top joint and 
to the bottom joint; and if it should choose to get 
rotten, both these joints would have good ground of 
complaint. Fools and knaves, and those people whose 
characters are an ingenious compound of both, are like 
the familiar fly that causes the ointment of the apothe- 


ON SATIRE. 


29 


cary to send forth a stinking savour. They are like a 
piece of grit under your eye, or like a thorn down your 
finger-nail. They are a perpetual bad example; a bad 
leaven, fermenting, corrupting, decomposing wherever 
they are. Their reputation and all their hopes depend 
upon men calling good evil, and evil good, putting light 
for darkness, and darkness for light, sweet for bitter, 
and bitter for sweet. Every pure and true society must 
needs exclude them, for they are incompatible with 
purity and truth. And if their falsehood is to be found 
in the deepest and most sacred part of their lives, it 
becomes a yet more solemn duty, a yet more grave 
necessity, to lay it bare. 

And this brings us to a very common objection urged, 
not against satire generally, but against that satire 
which presumes to meddle with what are called sacred 
things. As if you would damage the apostles by 
satirising Judas Iscariot; or the publican, who prayed 
“ God be merciful to me a sinner,” by satirising the 
Pharisees who boasted that they were righteous and 
despised others. What is it that makes all sensible and 
honest people look with a sort of suspicion even upon 
some of the best of the great religious and philanthropic 
organizations of our own country ? They are no way 
indifferent to the great objects for which these organiza¬ 
tions exist; they are just as anxious as other people are, 
that heathens should be made Christians, and they can 
have no manner of objection even to the conversion of 
“ social evils ” into decent members of society; and 
they are no way unwilling that the Gospel should be 
put within the reach of those who spend most of the 
week in selling whelks and periwinkles. But they 
cannot help seeing that well-meaning people are not 








30 


ON SATIBE. 


ashamed of obtaining money for great societies by con¬ 
temptible dodges which they would be ashamed to 
employ in any cause but the cause of Almighty God. 
They know the world far too well to put the smallest 
faith in tea parties for prostitutes at the healthy hour 
of midnight, even though divines beyond suspicion pre¬ 
side over the fallen. They are far too religious not to 
be disgusted with the frantic excesses of a revival, and 
they are far too well acquainted with history not to be 
aware that “ revivals ” are but another form of “ bac¬ 
chanalia.” When a preacher tells his congregation 
that he saw lamb in a butcher’s shop ticketed at eleven¬ 
pence a pound, hut that they may all have the Lamb 
of God for nothing; or when another ordained mounte¬ 
bank tells us that salvation is like a plum-pudding, cut 
and come again; or when another informs his hearers 
that the blood of Jesus Christ is like a postage stamp, 
and will pass any letter to the throne of God, however 
ill-written the direction, or dirty the envelope; or when 
again, parodying the fifty-first Psalm, he tells us that 
Almighty God writes down our transgressions in a hook, 
and then hides them all by a big drop of the Saviour’s 
blood—are we really to let him alone because he utters 
this in a pulpit, and because it is only the Gospel and 
Almighty God that he is making game of? Are we 
coolly to be told that this ribaldry is really far too sacred 
for a satirist to touch ? It is not sacred at all; it is 
a disgusting and odious blasphemy. It is this kind of 
thing that drives half the ignorant population into a 
superstition little better than paganism, and the other 
half into infidelity. 

And so, again, with the smaller vices of society, and 
especially of the religious world. The endless gossip 


ON SATIRE. 


31 


and backbiting, the eagerness to sacrifice everything, 
private character and even truth itself, to the interests 
of a sect or a party ; the habit of subordinating virtue 
to a self-satisfied orthodoxy; how are we to deal with 
vices of this sort ? Are we really to let them alone ? 
Is it nothing that a man’s reputation is gossiped away 
by a malicious meddler, who chooses to believe that his 
malice is zeal for the Lord ? Does it make the faintest 
difference to a man whose life has been embittered and 
whose prospects have been blighted b}? - the idle slanders 
of some sanctified miscreant, that the irreparable wrong 
was done in the name of conscience ? Can anybody 
suggest a wrong that has not been done sometimes in 
the name of conscience ? There is not one of the com¬ 
mandments that has not been broken for conscience 
sake ; men have lied for conscience sake, robbed for 
conscience sake, murdered for conscience sake; for 
conscience sake nations have been plunged into war; 
all the horrors of the Inquisition were for the glory of 
God; and with a cool love of mere principle that rises 
almost into sublimity, the Pope himself has, within the 
last few months, from his tottering chair damned the 
far larger part of the human race. Of course, when 
gossips and slanderers are held up to well-deserved 
contempt, they suddenly discover that it is extremely 
wrong for anybody to disturb their repose. They think 
it very unkind, and indisputably anti-Christian, in any 
one, for whatever reason, to wound their feelings. Very 
likely. And if a tiger ate a cat that was watching for 
a mouse, very likely the cat’s feelings would be wounded. 
Probably, also, though the Newgate hangman is not 
unskilful, the worthy Muller’s feelings were somewhat 
outraged. Picking oakum is a drearier business, no 





32 


ON SATIRE. 


doubt, than swindling one’s neighbours. There is a 
great deal of misery in the world; and of course if we 
had been consulted about the making of it, we should have 
constructed it on very different principles. We were 
not consulted, and there is nothing therefore left us but 
within certain limits to determine on whom the misery 
should fall. Shall it fall on the good or on the evil ? 
On the robber, or on the robbed ? On the murderer, or 
on his victim alone ? Is it not much more merciful to 
scorch with ridicule, and hold up to universal detesta¬ 
tion, the malicious slanderer, than to leave him to ruin 
the happiness of a score of his neighbours ? 

There is perhaps no nobler rule, either in Scripture 
or anywhere else, than the rule, “ Do unto others as ye 
would that they should do unto you.” And this is the 
very rule that every honest satirist might print on his 
title-page. For he might very well say to himself, “ If 
I were ever to fall into these evil habits that I mean to 
satirise, I should thank anybody from the bottom of my 
heart who would whip me out of them, and prevent my 
doing irreparable mischief to my fellow-creatures ; I 
would rather be held up to the scorn of the whole 
world, than destroy the reputation and ruin the peace 
of those who dwell securely by me. Very likely if I did 
acquire those evil habits which now seem to me so 
accursed, I should at the same time become so blind to 
my own truest interests, that I should wish to be left 
alone to my sin and mischief. But that would not be 
the desire of my own true self; the true man in me 
would be crying out for deliverance, however acute the 
pain through which deliverance might come. Now, 
by anticipation, I ask for the needed punishment; I, 
sober, appeal against myself drunk ; I, with my eyes 


ON SATIRE. 


33 


wide open, appeal against myself, a poor wretch blinded 
by possible crime. If I yield myself np to folly and 
vice, I beseech all good men to smite me, and it shall 
be a kindness, yea, an excellent oil that shall not break 
my head.” He who has never felt, and who does not 
feel, somewhat after this manner, has no business to be 
a satirist. 

Law and religion govern two totally different regions 
of human life, the outward and the inward. Law is 
concerned only with overt acts, rigidly defined and 
strictly proved; it cares nothing for motives, excepting 
so far as outward acts are technically and legally allowed 
to imply them. Murder implies malice; and if there 
be no malice, its absence must be clearly proved. But 
religion, on the other hand, and morality, which is a 
part of religion, are concerned chiefly with motives, and 
with outward acts chiefly as indications of that moral 
character from which they spring. The malicious man 
has offended against morality, though he may have been 
unable to accomplish all the mischief that it was in his 
heart to do. The slanderer is regarded as an evil-doer, 
though he may have published no libel, nor come within 
the danger of an action for defamation of character. 
But it is plain that the law can punish only those 
offences which the law has defined, and there must be 
some other than legal punishment for those offences 
which lie beyond the region of law. In many ways 
has such punishment been inflicted. It has been in¬ 
flicted, for instance, by the Church, which cuts off" from 
its communion those who refuse to live according to the 
laws of the divine family. It is punished by public 
opinion, and the numerous excommunications of ordi¬ 
nary society. “Nature has given for their defence, 

D 






34 


ON SATIRE. 


horns to bulls, hoofs to horses, swiftness of foot to 
hares, beauty to women,” and to injured society, im¬ 
penetrable forgetfulness. The vulgar, ungentlemanly 
man nobody is obliged to recognise; and he may be 
compelled to live in utter loneliness, in the very midst 
of his alienated friends. And so, also, at once for the 
punishment of evil-doers, and the warning of those who 
are tempted to become evil-doers, we have satire. The 
extreme limits of its severity are those limits at which 
the severity of the law must stop; beyond those limits 
the law will not suffer it to pass; and beyond those 
limits the law performs those duties with perfect effi¬ 
ciency, which satire could never hope to discharge at 
all. Satire may never become libellous ; but, on the 
other hand, if men will persist in living so close to the 
edge of crime, that it is almost impossible to describe 
their character and lives without such language as would 
be construed by law a libel, they must not complain if 
the satirist should compensate himself and society for 
being compelled to say less than the truth, by making 
it perfectly obvious for whom what he does say is 
intended. 

After all, that which constitutes the bitterness, con¬ 
stitutes also the value of satire ; and that is, its truth. 
Take truth away, and whom does satire touch ? “ ’Tis 
a knavish piece of work, but what of that ? Your 
majesty, and we that have free souls, it touches us not; 
let the galled jade wince, our withers are unwrung.” 
The honest women in Rome might have read, not 
indeed without shame, but with a very hearty thank¬ 
fulness, the sixth satire of Juvenal. It is only parasites 
who feel offended when the meanness and servility of 
parasites is held up to derision and contempt. A man 




ON SATIRE. 


35 


of high principle and undaunted courage never regards 
your censure of sneaks and cowards as a personal affront. 
And yet, on the other hand, what cause of complaint 
have they, the poor galled jades who wince under your 
satires ? You are really doing them a service, if they 
only knew it. Hitherto, society has known only one 
side of their characters, and has therefore formed but a 
poor opinion of their versatility. So you kindly turn 
them round and round for public inspection, and new 
wonders and beauties are disclosed at every turn. If 
the various sides are not very symmetrical, all you can say 
is, that you did not make them, and you are very sorry 
for it. It would surely be a great pity to leave people 
to he frightened at an ass in a lion’s skin, or worried by 
a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Strip off the skins, good 
satirist, stick your long knife into the heart of the wolf, 
and send the donkey hack again to his thistles. 

Still, though useful, and in a wicked world like ours, 
necessary, it must be confessed that satire is the least 
pleasing form of literature. It may be the fruit of love, 
but it may also be appropriated by hate. It may be the 
honesty of the righteous, but it may be employed also 
by the malicious and cowardly. It deals with one side 
only of human character and life, and that the worst 
side; the side which sours men’s tempers, and turns 
them into those snarling dogs which, when they bark 
articulately, are called cynic philosophers. The world 
would be well rid of Diogenes, if he were drowned in his 
own tub; and Timon in his den is neither wiser nor 
better than Timon in his palace. The satirist or the 
writer of satirical fictions should write in that style but 
seldom, only after long intervals devoted to the contempla¬ 
tion of the good and true; that so he may satirise more 

d 2 





36 


ON SATIRE. 


in grief than anger, and with a sincere desire not merely 
to make the had miserable, but to make them good. 
Satire must always seem false to a loving spirit, and 
even to any man of wide experience ; < for there is more 
good in the world than evil, more love than hatred, 
more honest men than knaves, more of God than of the 
devil. 


/ 




ELIZABETH AND HEB ENGLAND.* 


It is scarcely possible to imagine a stranger contrast 
than that between the spirit of Mr. Fronde’s History f 
and the spirit of the age of which he is the historian. 
We scarcely realize how great is the advance of know¬ 
ledge, the change in our methods of investigation and 
canons of criticism, and the total alteration in the habits, 
and judgments, and ideals of the English people since 
the Tudor period, until some such history as Mr. Froude’s 
brings us face to face with that past which seems so 
completely to have vanished away. Natural philosophy 
has a region of its own, and is not compelled even so 
much as to recognize those earlier efforts, which in com¬ 
parison with modern discoveries and achievements are 
scarcely worth remembering. Even metaphysics are so 
separated from other departments of study that it is 
thought possible to teach the philosophy of substance 
and attribute, without so much as an indirect censure or 
approval of the doctrine of transubstantiation. To the 
astronomer or the chemist all religions are of equal im¬ 
portance, or equally of no importance ; and the very 
origin of species is discussed without an allusion to the 

* Fortnightly Review. 

f “ History of England, from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death 
of Elizabeth.” By J. A. Froude, M.A., Vols. ix. and x. London : 
Longmans, I 860 . 




38 


ELIZABETH AND HER ENGLAND. 


Mosaic cosmogony. But the historian of the England 
of Elizabeth finds himself among men to whom theo¬ 
logical dogmas and ecclesiastical systems seemed to he 
the only things worth regarding. It was not asked 
whether men were good, or had, true or treacherous ; it 
was only beginning to be asked whether foreign alliances, 
or domestic laws, were or were not for the good of the 
nation. But the question which was always asked con¬ 
cerning every individual, and every policy, was this: How 
is it related to religion—to the old creed of the Roman 
Church, or the Reformed doctrines of Christ’s gospel ? 
The unmistakeable earnestness with which this question 
was asked, even by men whose own characters were black 
with every imaginable infamy, is one of the most 
astounding marvels of all history. 

“ Through Christ,” says Mr. Froucle, “ came charity and 
mercy; from theology came strife and hatred, and that fatal 
root of bitterness of which our Lord spoke Himself in the 
mournful prophecy, that He had not come to send peace on earth 
but a sword. When His name and His words had been preached 
for fifteen centuries, there were none found who could tolerate 
difference of opinion on the operation of Baptism, or on the 
nature of His presence in the Eucharist; none, or at least none 
but the hard-hearted children of the world. The more religion 
any man had, the more eager was he to put away by fire and sword 
all those whose convictions differed from his own. 

“ The Reformation was the beginning of a new order of things. 
The recognition that false dogmas had for many centuries been 
violently intruded upon mankind, and the consequent revolt 
against the authority which imposed them, were in reality a pro¬ 
test against the dogmatic system, and an admission of the rights 
of conscience. When the visible unity of the Church was once 
broken, the multitude of the opinions which ensued compelled their 
reciprocal toleration; and the experience that men of different per¬ 
suasions can live together with mutual advantage and mutual 
respect has untwisted slowly the grasp of the theological fingers 
from the human throat. The truth again begins to be felt,—though 


ELIZABETH AND HER ENGLAND. 


39 


as yet it can hardly be avowed,—that religion does not consist in 
an assent to propositions; that the essence of it is something 
which is held alike by Catholic and Anglican, Arminian, Lutheran, 
Calvinist, Samaritan,.or Jew.” * 

This passage contains the grand moral of Mr. Froude’s 
history, while it also explains his singular impartiality. 
There is indeed an impartiality which is destructive of 
all real insight into the motives and characters of men, 
and into the nature and tendency of great social and 
political movements. Such an impartiality degenerates 
always into a cynical indifference, and turns history into 
satire. No honest man can regard with equal approval, 
high-spirited, self-sacrificing patriots, and the mean and 
selfish cowards who have been ever eager to sell their 
country for their own gain. No wise man can pretend 
to be indifferent when he is called upon to judge be¬ 
tween a policy or legislation which tends to promote the 
general well-being of a people, and the wretched mis- 
government which glorifies and enriches the few by 
robbing and demoralising the great mass of society. 
The great test of utility and th^t moral law to which the 
test of utility has guided every thoughtful observer, can 
no more be neglected without baseness in literature than 
in life. Mr. Froude’s sympathies are not only undis- 
guisedly on the side of common goodness and common 
honesty, but he writes almost as if he had come into 
personal living intercourse with the princes, and states¬ 
men, and soldiers of the Tudor period. It cannot be 
doubted that to him Cecil is a personal friend, a man 
whose reputation he would guard as carefully as his own. 
It is plain, too, that he regards Elizabeth, in spite of all 


* Froucle, ix., p. 306. 




40 


ELIZABETH AND HER ENGLAND. 


her weakness of character, and the strange twist in her 
moral nature, which seemed to render it impossible for 
her to journey along a straight road anywhere, as a 
grand heroic woman—the very centre of the new life and 
movement of the Reformation age. To him also John 
Knox is a prophet of the living God ; and Mary Stuart, 
in the deepest sense, an anti-Christ—almost an in¬ 
carnate devil. Let his impartiality consist in this, 
that he would no more hear false witness, on one side or 
the other, than he would perjure himself to-morrow in a 
common English witness box. He will “ nothing ex¬ 
tenuate, nor set down aught in malice ;” and the reason 
why he is able to maintain this strict justice is pre¬ 
cisely this, that he has himself learned the lesson of the 
Reformation—the lesson that religion is greater than 
dogmas, and that men are to be judged by their works, 
and not by their creeds. How hard it is to learn this 
lesson can be realized only by those who have had to 
tight their own way through bigotry and intolerance, and 
who have found for themselves that even now the. 
English people owe tlieir liberties, not to the Church, 
but to the world; not to the convocation of the clergy, 
but to the Commons’ House of Parliament; not to the 
archbishops and bishops, but to the judges in the secular 
courts. 

The last two volumes of Mr. Froude’s history embrace 
only the short period of seven years; and these seven 
years were years not so much of revolution, producing by 
a single effort clearly-defined results, as years of tran¬ 
sition and growth. There was scarcely a single question 
of vital importance which had even approached to a 
solution. Whether England should be Catholic or Pro¬ 
testant, and if Protestant whether Anglican or Puritan; 


ELIZABETH AND HER ENGLAND. 


41 


whether the nation should adhere to the Spanish alliance 
or seek the alliance of France ; whether the Protestants, 
who were disturbing the peace of Europe, should be 
helped or left to perish; what should be done with Ireland; 
■whether the Queen of Scots should be restored to her 
throne or beheaded—no English statesman, during the 
seven years of which Mr. Froude’s last volumes contain 
the history, could have answered these questions. Even 
Cecil with a wisdom and integrity, an insight and a 
foresight, quite unmatched by any other of Elizabeth’s 
statesmen, was frequently bewildered. And yet these 
questions were so vital that each or all of them were hut 
another form of 'the one great question for the English 
people, Shall there continue to be an English people at 
all? 

On the other hand—as Mr. Froude better than any 
other historian has shown—the uncertainty arose, not 
from the decay of English intellect and English god¬ 
liness, but from the vitality of the English people. 
There was no policy in those years of hesitation and 
contradiction for which some good reason could not be 
urged. The nation was growing; but the new and the 
old w r ere so intimately and vitally connected that they 
could not he torn asunder. • Even among the rebels there 
were men both honest and wise, Catholics and Protestants, 
friends of the Queen of Scots, and friends of the Eegent, 
and of the infant King. All could appeal to some sacred 
precedent, or to the utility of change ; the inalienable 
right of kings, or the yet more inalienable right of whole 
nations; the infallibility of the Church, or the divine 
glory of human reason. With so much going and so 
much coming, even the wisest could scarcely find their 
way to their own true home. 



42 


ELIZABETH AND HEB ENGLAND. 


And this may help us to understand the universal and 
loathsome treachery of which every statesman of every 
party was continually guilty. Alone among men, John 
Knox refused to bow’ down and worship the spirit of evil. 
Doubtless the kingdoms of this world were to become 
the kingdom of God and of His Christ; but if Almighty 
God in His Divine patience could wait through long 
years for so great a triumph, much more could John 
Knox. He would not tell a lie even to save a soul, nor 
condescend to the treachery and dishonesty of the states¬ 
men of his day even for the sake of the whole Scotch 
nation. Cecil too, was a deceiver under protest. He 
felt that he lived in the midst of diplomatic war, where¬ 
in, all trust having been destroyed, treachery had become 
impossible. But for the most part men revelled in 
dishonesty, and lied as if lying were the final cause of 
the faculty of speech. In the ordinary intercourse of 
society no human being would be tolerated for a single 
day who could condescend to the meannesses which were 
practised, without remorse and without shame, by every 
statesman in Europe in the reign of Elizabeth. Eliza¬ 
beth herself w T as so stupendous a liar that even her own 
best friends never knew when to believe her or when to 
trust her. She lied to Leicester, she lied to Cecil, she 
lied to the Council, she lied to the Parliament, she lied 
to the Queen of Scots, she lied to the Ptegent, she lied 
to Maitland, she lied to Spain, and to France, and to 
Austria and to the Pope; she lied right and left, thick 
and thin, year after year, though her lying nearly cost 
her her own throne, devastated Scotland with civil war, 
and deluged France with the blood of the Huguenots. 
Such was the spirit of the age, that, compared with the . 
Duke of Norfolk and Mary Stuart, compared even with 


ELIZABETH AND HER ENGLAND. 43 

the French and Spanish ambassadors, Elizabeth was 
transparent and sincere. 

Nevertheless, in the midst of treachery, and every kind 
of crafty “bye-practices,” there was also a sort of 
honour, an excuse for fraud, a slow process of change 
and growth, which made the wisdom of to-day the folly 
of to-morrow. Even Maitland, one of the falsest of the 
false men of that age, could urge apologies for his fickle¬ 
ness and deceit, the force of which it is impossible to den}\ 

“ ‘You ask me why I have changed my mind,’ he writes to 
Sussex. 4 Have you never changed yours ? Those are not the 
"wisest men who remain always of the same opinion. The skilful 
sailing master applies his course as the wind and weather drive 
him. You speak pf philosophy; I have none of it. Yet if I 
turned my mind that way, I would not study it after the intract¬ 
able discipline of the Stoics, hut would rather become a student 
in the school where it is taught that wise men’s minds must be 
led by probable reasons. That same firm, certain, unchangeable, 
and undoubting persuasion, which is requisite in matters of faith 
must not be required in matters of policy ; and good and evil are 
not such in themselves, but in their relation to other things. 
You say, persons, cause, and matter are the same. It is not so, 
for time has altered many things. The affections of men are 
changed in both realms, and the persons are altered. The person 
of the late Regent was a circumstance of no small moment. 
And severity was a matter which might well vary only with the 
change of tune. To sequestrate the Queen for a season might be 
required; to keep her all her days in prison would be rigour in¬ 
tolerable. Were it true that I had advised more hard dealing 
yet the substance of tilings is not changed by our opinion. They 
are not good or ill, rigorous or equitable, because we think them 
so. I might have been wrong then, and I might be right now.’ ” * 

I might have been wrong then, and I might be right 
now. For in that time of change, and clashing 
interests, and battling creeds, new elements were con¬ 
tinually presenting themselves to vitiate the most 


* Maitland to Sussex, (condensed.) Froude, x., 90. 










44 


ELIZABETH AND HER ENGLAND. 


cautions conclusions of the wisest statesmen. The 
moral law of diplomacy is hard to discover, and harder 
to apply; hut it may perhaps he admitted that when the 
intercourse of states is empty of all trust, when it can 
safely be carried on only by the aid of intercepting 
letters, by spies, by the rack and the dungeon, and by 
universal suspicion, it had better come wholly to an end. 

Yet if the intercourse does continue, the man who 
cannot be trusted ought not to be trusted ; if there are 
plots, there must be counter plots, and craft must be 
outwitted by craft. 

Perhaps the sincerest part of Elizabeth’s conduct was 
her treatment of Mary Stuart. That treatment of her 
unhappy rival was indeed full of inconsistencies; but 
they were the result of a consistent desire to save the 
Queen of Scotland from the consequences of her own 
baseness. It is not wonderful that a princess who fas¬ 
cinated every man—save one—who ever came into her 
presence, should have had power from that scaffold, 
which was the dark exit from her long captivity, to fas¬ 
cinate posterity. Sentiment, too, is ever more abundant, 
easier, and more luxurious than reason ; and the portrait 
of Mary Stuart is to be seen over the altar of a Roman 
Catholic Church. Political prejudice, and religious 
bigotry have long ago transformed the woman, who was 
perhaps One of the worst women that ever lived, into a 
saint and a martyr ; and it is a hard and invidious task to 
show her to the world as she really was. But the fame of 
the Queen of Scots is the infamy of Elizabeth, and to 
canonize Mary Stuart is to condemn the Reformation. 

It is hopeless to fight against the prejudices of those 
who determine the facts of history by their theological 
preferences; they cannot understand the Reformation, 





ELIZABETH AND HER ENGLAND. 


45 


because they are in the very position of the men who 
made the Reformation necessary, and who were its 
bitterest foes. But it may be worth while to prove, as 
Mr. Froude has proved with an almost superfluous 
completeness, that as Mary was false to everything else, 
false to every human being with whom she had to do, so 
she was false also to the Roman Catholic Church. 

Her first treachery to her religion was in that foulest 
portion of her history when she was wallowing in the 
mire of lust and cruelty with Bothwell. It was no un¬ 
pardonable sin that with that profligate ruffian she had 
been the murderar of her own husband—that she had 
lured the weak unhappy wretch to death by tender 
caresses, and the kisses of Judas Iscariot. To affirm the 
Catholic dogmas, or to take due part in the Catholic 
ceremonies, w r as counted in those days a surer road to 
heaven than the keeping of God’s commandments. 
Mary had no religion, but she had a very decided pre¬ 
ference for the Roman make-believe; and if she was 
sure of anything, she was sure of this—that she would 
be justly damned if she disobeyed the Pope, or prohibited 
the mass. And yet she was willing to do this—and to 
do it not for the peace of Scotland, not in the spirit of 
far-seeing toleration, or the wisdom of political expe¬ 
diency, but only for the sake of carnal dalliance with 
a worthless scoundrel. Bothwell had lost all hope of 
securing the favour of the Catholic party ; it was needful 
therefore to bid the higher for the favour of the Pro¬ 
testants. For his sake, therefore, the queen was willing 
to dishonour the Catholic ritual, and to be married by a 
Calvinistic service. She revoked all licences to use the 
Catholic service ; and declared that for the future, the 
Act of Religion of 1560, prohibiting the mass to every 








46 


ELIZABETH AND HER ENGLAND. 


one, should be strictly maintained. Wliat need to care, 
even for the damnation of every soul in Scotland, if only 
she might be permitted to toy with Botliwell ? 

At every stage of her dark, downward journey she was 
equally ready, for her own interests, and for the sweet¬ 
ness of revenge, to forsake the old faith; and to accept 
any faith, or no faith at all, as might best serve her turn. 
At Bolton Castle, while as yet she was rather the guest 
than the prisoner of the too patient and credulous Eliza¬ 
beth, the fervour of her Protestant piety had almost 
deceived Sir Francis Knollys. “ Surely,” he wrote to 
Cecil, “ this Queen doth seem outwardly not only to 
favour the form but also the chief articles of the Gospel, 
namely, justification by faith only ; and she hearetli the 
faults of Papistry revealed by preaching or otherwise, 
with contented ears, and gentle and weak replies.”* She 
consented, if Elizabeth would reinstate her in her 
realm, to abandon the mass in Scotland and receive the 
Common Prayer after the form of England. Of course 
she was lying. “ The Queen,” she wrote to De Silva, 
“ is using her advantage * * * * to force me and 

the poor Catholics to agree to a change of religion. 
* * * * * For my own part, I would sooner be 
murdered.”f At that time, by Papists, even Papist lies 
were deemed better than Protestant honesty; but that 
time has passed away. And surely now she can be 
scarcely worth the homage of honest men of any creed, 
who was ready at any moment to change her “ religion,” 
and to copipel her subjects to change theirs. It is not 
of such material that saints and martyrs have been made. 


# Knollys to Cecil. Fronde, ix., p. 269. 
f Queen of Scots to De Silva. MSS. Simancas, Froude, ix., p. 268. 







ELIZABETH AND HER ENGLAND. 


47 


And yet it was for this woman that, with a consistency 
which was compelled to assume all manner of incon¬ 
sistent forms, Elizabeth w r as continually endangering 
her own throne and risking her own life. Nothing can 
exceed the reckless, irritating despotism of the English 
Queen; and in nothing is the impartiality of Mr. 
Froude’s history more remarkable than in his unvar¬ 
nished narrative of Elizabeth’s perversity. He clearly 
regards her with favour and admiration, and yet he 
leaves upon his readers the just impression that the 
Queen, “had greatness thrust upon her;” that every 
one of her glories is in fact the glory of her wisest 
ministers; that if she had been left to herself, the 
Reformation would have been wrecked, and she herself 
assassinated. She had no princely grace ; she neither 
knew when to he firm nor when to yield. She, was, in¬ 
deed, “ semper eadem ; ” hut she was the same, because 
she was consistently inconsistent; and nothing in her 
character or government was unchangeable hut her 
mutability. 

This despotic perverseness was perhaps least unami- 
ahle, though by no means least dangerous, in Elizabeth’s 
treatment of the Queen of Scots; yet even here, it must 
not he forgotten, that Elizabeth did not regard her rival 
only as a near kinswoman, or a confiding suppliant, hut 
rather as an anointed sovereign, in whose cause every 
sovereign had a personal interest. The right to rebel 
could never he bounded by the Scotch frontier; and 
Elizabeth thought far more of the danger of rebellion, 
than of the fact that the deadliest danger of rebellion was 
in Mary Stuart herself. 

When we hear so much of Elizabeth’s nobleness, and 
of the queenly grace with w T hich she made concessions, 






48 


ELIZABETH AND HER ENGLAND. 


when concession was necessary, it is worth while to 
point out under what circumstances, and in what man¬ 
ner, she did concede, and how and when she displaj^ed 
her nobleness. It is, perhaps, to begin with, an in¬ 
ferior kind of virtue to need to concede. To avoid a 
conflict is surely a safer and a more dignified behaviour. 
Nor can it be denied, that when Elizabeth quarrelled 
with her parliaments and her ministers, they were in 
almost every case clearly right, and she was clearfy 
wrong. It is no extravagant praise to affirm, that at the 
last moment, when she was brought face to face with 
utter destruction, she preferred a pretty speech to sheer 
ruin. The parliaments of Henry VIII. were exceedingly 
numerous; Elizabeth’s parliaments were exceedingly 
few. They were called together reluctantly, they were 
hindered in their debates, they were grossly insulted at 
their dissolution. Only one parliament was called 
during the seven years, the history of which is com¬ 
prised in Mr. Froude’s last two volumes. It was called 
at a time of great danger, when a formidable rebellion 
had just been crushed, and when the treasons and 
crimes of the chief traitor, Mary Stuart, had been proved 
beyond all possibility of doubt. Yet even that parlia¬ 
ment was dismissed with coldest thanks; and the only 
concession that could be wrung from the Queen was the 
too long deferred execution of Norfolk. The Commons 
knew what the Queen of Scots really was—“ a bosom 
serpent.” The very least that faithful subjects could 
. desire was her attainder. But Elizabeth stopped their 

proceedings. 

\ 

“ Her answer lias not been preserved, but it was so dangerously 
unsatisfactory, that Burghley became dangerously ill with anxi¬ 
ety. The great minister would yield neither to objections nor to 





ELIZABETH AND HER ENGLAND. 


49 


sickness. He could not stand, but he was carried in his litter to 
parliament. He was carried in his litter to the Queen’s presence. 
He strained every nerve to move her, but he still failed. The 
Commons had expressed impatience that Norfolk was left un¬ 
punished ; Leicester informed Walsingham that he saw no like¬ 
lihood of the Duke’s execution.” * 

The agitation of the House of Commons continued, 
and the Queen was compelled to yield so far as to pro¬ 
mise to receive a deputation from the two Houses, and 
to hear what they had to say. They said what they 
believed, and what they wished ; and what they believed 
Elizabeth knew to be true, and what they desired she 
knew to be necessary. And yet she would not, and did 
not yield. 

“ She admitted that the course which the Committee recom¬ 
mended was ‘ the best and surest way.’ She was perfectly aware 
that, so long as the Queen of Scots lived, she would never her¬ 
self be secure ; yet partly from weakness, partly from the peculiar 
tenderness which from first to last had characterised her dealings 
with her cousin, partly, it may be, from an instinctive foresight of 
the hard construction of posterity, she shrank from granting what 
she could no longer positively refuse. She thanked the Houses 
for their care for her safety. She asked them only to ‘ defer their 
proceedings’ for a time, and pass a less extreme measure mean¬ 
while. The law officers of the Crown, she said, could contrive 
means of evading the difficulties which the Committee had raised.”f 

“ To defer for a time only ”—when parliaments were 
fewer and fewer, and the very necessity for ending the 
delay would be certain to defer the Parliament! “Partly 
from weakness—partly, partly,” etc., etc. But wholly the 
Queen denied the only thing the Parliament cared about 
her conceding—she abandoned her best friends to the peril 
of their lives, and her worst enemy she sent away in peace. 


* Froude, x. 362. f Ibid. 365. 

E 







50 


ELIZABETH AND HER ENGLAND. 


But about this “ concession ”—though it is impos¬ 
sible to discover what was conceded—there was so much 
grace, that the Parliament was not lectured like a crowd 
of impudent, meddlesome school-boys. Elizabeth’s 
earlier Parliaments had been far less fortunate. The 
Parliament, for instance, of 1566, had ventured to advise 
the Queen’s marriage. It is one of the penalties of 
royal dignity, that kings and queens must marry for 
expediency, and not merely for love. Elizabeth herself 
was disgracefully entangled with Amy Robsart’s husband, 
and coquetted with every marriageable prince in Europe, 
till she had made both herself and them a laughing¬ 
stock. But she could not bear the advice, the affec¬ 
tionate entreaties of her own people. Thus gracefully, 
therefore, she conceded to her Parliament of 1566 :— 

“ On the afternoon of the 5tli of November, ‘ by her Highness’s 
special commandment,’ twenty-five lay peers, the Bishops of 
Durham and London, and thirty members of the Lower House, 
presented themselves at the palace of Westminster. 

“ The address was read by Bacon. 

“ After grateful acknowledgments of the general government of 
the Queen, the two Houses desired, first, to express their wish that 
her Highness would be pleased to marry, * where it should please 
her, with whom it should please her, and as soon as it should 
please her.’ 

“ Further, as it was possible, that her Highness might die with¬ 
out children, her faithful subjects were anxious to know more 
particularly the future prospects of the realm. Much as they 
wished to see her married, the settlement of the succession was 
even more important ‘ carrying with it such necessity that with¬ 
out it they could not see how the safety of her royal person, or the 
preservation of her imperial realm and crown, could be or should 
be sufficiently and certainly provided for.’ ‘ Her late illness (the 
Queen had been unwell again), the amazedness, that most men of 
understanding were by fruit of that sickness brought unto,’ and 
the opportunity of making a definite arrangement, while Parlia- 


ELIZABETH AND HER ENGLAND. 


51 


ment was sitting, were the motives which induced them to be 
more urgent than they would otherwise have cared to be. His¬ 
tory and precedent alike recommended a speedy decision. They 
hoped that she might live to have a child of her own; but she was 
mortal, and should she die before her subjects knew to whom 
their allegiance was due, a civil war stared them in the face. 
The decease of a prince leaving a realm without a government 
was the most frightful disaster which could befall the common¬ 
wealth ; with the vacancy of the throne all writs were suspended, 
all commissions were void, law itself was dead. Her Majesty 
was not ignorant of these things. If she refused to provide a 
remedy, ‘ it would be a dangerous burden before God upon her 
Majesty.’ They had therefore felt it to be their duty to present 
this address ; and on their knees they implored her to consider it, 
and to give them an answer before the session closed. 

“ Elizabeth had prepared her answer. As soon as Bacon 
ceased, she drew herself up and spoke as follows:— 

“‘If the order of your cause had matched the weight of your 
matter, the one might well have craved reward, and the other 
much the sooner be satisfied. But when I call to mind how far 
from dutiful care, yea, rather, how nigh a traitorous trick this 
humbling cast did spring, I muse how men of wit can so hardly 
use that gift they hold. I marvel not much that bridleless colts 
do not know their rider’s hand whom bit of kingly rein did never 
snaffle yet. Whether it was fit that so great a cause as this should 
have had this beginning in such a public place as that, let it be 
well weighed. Must all evil bodings that might be recited be 
found little enough to hap to my share? Was it well meant, 
think you, that those that knew how fit this matter was to be 
granted by the prince, would prejudicate their prince in aggrava¬ 
ting the matter ? So all their arguments tended to my careless 
care of tills my dear realm.’ 

“ So far she spoke from a form which remains in her own 
handwriting. She continued perhaps in the same style, but her 
words only remain in the Spanish of De Silva :— 

“ ‘ She was not surprised at the Commons,’ she said; ‘ they had 
small experiences, and had acted like boys ; but that the Lords 
should have gone along with them, she confessed had filled her 
with wonder. There were some among them who had placed 
their swords at her disposal when her sister was upon the throne, 
and had invited her to seize the Crown; she knew but too well 

E 2 







52 


ELIZABETH AND HER ENGLAND. 


that if she allowed a successor to be named, there would be found 
men who would approach him or her with the same encourage - 
ment to disturb the peace of the realm. If she pleased she could 
name the persons to whom she alluded. When time and circum¬ 
stances would allow, she would see to the matter of their petition 
before they asked her; she would be sorry to be forced into doing 
anything which in reason and justice she was bound to do ; and 
she concluded with a request that her words should not be mis¬ 
interpreted.’ 

“ So long as she was speaking to the lay peers, she controlled 
her temper, but her passion required a safety valve, and she 
rarely lost an opportunity of insulting and affronting her bishops. 

“ Turning sharp round where Grindal and Pilkington were 
standing—‘ And you, doctors,' she said—it was her pleasure to 
ignore their right to a higher title,—‘ you, I understand, make 
long prayers about this business. One of you dared to say in 
times past that I and my sister were bastards ; and you must 
needs be interfering in what does not concern you. Go home and 
amend your own lives, and set an honest example in your families. 
The lords in parliament should have taught you to know your 
places ; but if they have forgotten their places, I will not forget 
mine. Did I choose I might make the impertinence of the whole 
set of you an excuse to withdraw my promise to marry ; but for 
the realm’s sake I am resolved that I will marry, and I will take 
a husband that will not be to the taste of some of you. I have 
not married hitherto out of consideration to you, but it shall be 
done now, and you who have been so urgent with me will find 
the effects of it to your cost. Think you, the prince who will be 
my consort will feel himself safe with such as you, who thus dare 
to thwart and cross your natural Queen ? ’ ” 

“ She turned on her heel and sailed out of the hall of audience, 
vouchsafing no other word.” * 

Elizabeth was certainly wiser than the Stuarts, for she 
preferred her life to her obstinacy, and always kept her 
head at a safe distance from the block and the axe. 
But in spite of all her wisdom, she contrived to irritate 
every class of her subjects, and lived in constant peril of 


* Froude, viii. 313-316. 



ELIZABETH AND HER ENGLAND. 


53 


assassination. Mr. Froude has failed to show a single 
instance in which Elizabeth took the right course in 
any dangerous crisis except upon compulsion. A ruler 
may be one who has the actual power and wisdom to 
command men, a true leader of the people, taking 
always the initiative, and by the divine right of a 
superior genius treating statesmen, even of the highest 
order, as the mere ministers of his royal pleasure. On 
the other hand, a king may be what we call a consti¬ 
tuted sovereign, not leading his people but being led by 
them ; ruled by his ministers, rather than ruling them. 
Such a king will be spared both the glory and the re¬ 
sponsibility of the highest royalty. But Elizabeth 
belonged to neither of these classes; she could not rule, 
and she would suffer nobody to rule her; she was con¬ 
tinually opposing her most discreet advisers, and yet she 
would take no responsibility upon herself. There was 
not a single department of the Government in which she 
did not “ meddle and muddle.” She was no doubt 
economical, but even her economy was both politically 
and morally mischievous. So beggarly was her parsi¬ 
mony, that when the fugitive Queen of Scots appealed 
to her princely benevolence for fitting clothing, Eliza¬ 
beth sent her two torn shifts, two pieces of black velvet, 
and two pairs of shoes. Even Sir Francis Knollys was 
obliged for shame to shield his mistress by saying that 
he thought “ her Highness’s maid had mistaken, and 
had sent things necessary for such a maid-servant as she 
was herself.” Mary Stuart in a beggar’s rags would 
have been more fascinating than Elizabeth in her 
Queen’s robes ; for, in spite of all her artifices, there was 
a sort of genuineness about her that could well dispense 
with the shows and trappings of royalty. The couple of 



54 


ELIZABETH AND HER ENGLAND. 


torn shifts, therefore, were a comparatively harmless 
meanness, but it was seldom indeed that the Queen of 
England’s parsimony failed to produce the bitterest 
fruit. After the Northern rebellion she alienated the 
common people by hanging all the poor misguided 
rabble of conspirators, and sparing the lives of the far 
more guilty leaders, whose confiscated lands might help 
to replenish her treasury. Her ministers never won 
fortunes in her service ; they were permitted only the 
doubtful honour of wasting them. She sent her viceroys 
to Ireland, and hade them conquer and civilize the wild 
savages. But, though she urged them, and even com¬ 
manded them on their allegiance to undertake the cost¬ 
liest and most perilous work to which they could he 
appointed, she would give them neither soldiers nor 
money, nor even genuine thanks for the successes which 
they had achieved at their own personal risk. Her 
officers on the Scottish border were utterly distracted by 
her impracticable caprices; so little did she know her 
own mind, that for the most part her orders w r ere counter¬ 
manded even more swiftly than it would have been pos¬ 
sible to begin to execute them. The Scotch lords hated 
her, King’s party and Queen’s party equally distrusted 
her. Men like Maitland despised and played with her, 
and openly threatened that they would make the Queen 
of England whine like a whipped hound. Her self- 
willed obstinacy deluged Scotland with blood, and was at 
the bottom of all the discontent of her own subjects. In¬ 
directly she was the cause even of the infernal massacre 
on the eve of St. Bartholomew. 

After that dreadful carnage the people would have torn 
the French treaty to shreds, driven the ambassador out 
of the country, and flung defiance at the whole French 


ELIZABETH AND HER ENGLAND. 


55 


nation; and it was not until the middle of September 
that even the cautious Queen herself could admit the 
ambassador to an audience. 

“ The Court was at Woodstock, on its way from Warwick to 
Windsor. The whole council was collected. Bedford and Bacon, 
though both unwell, were particularly sent for. Queen, ministers, 
attendants, were all in mourning ; and when La Mothe Fenelon 
was introduced, he was received in solemn silence. On such 
occasions the littleness of Elizabeth’s character entirely dis¬ 
appeared, and the imperial majesty of her nobler nature pos¬ 
sessed her wholly. If any misgiving crossed her mind on 
her own past proceedings, she showed no signs of it. She rose 
with a grave but not unkind expression. She drew La Mothe 
aside into a window, and asked if the dreadful news she had 
heard could possibly be true. La Mothe Fenelon, who was by 
this time perfect in his lesson, produced the story of the 
admiral’s conspiracy, the plot for the surprise of the court, the 
king’s danger, and the necessity for a desperate remedy in a 
desperate case. 

“ Elizabeth did not say that she disbelieved him ; but if the 
charge was true, the king, she said, had brought a stain upon his 
reputation, from which she had hoped he would have been able 
to clear himself. She had persuaded herself that the miserable 
scenes in Paris had risen from some extraordinary accident which 
time would explain; but it appeared now, from what La Mothe 
had told her, that the king had himself sanctioned an insurrection 
in which thousands of innocent persons had lost their lives. 

“ The ambassador explained, protested, equivocated. He 
expressed a hope, that at least the friendship between the two 
countries would not be disturbed. 

“ The Queen replied, coldly, that she feared a king who had 
abandoned his subjects might desert his allies. She could only 
hope that for his own sake he would produce evidence of the 
alleged conspiracy, and would protect such of the Protestants as 
had no share in it. 

“ La Mothe, to turn the subject, said that the Queen of France 
was near her confinement, and he ventured to remind Elizabeth 
that she had promised to be godmother to the child. 

“ She told him that she had intended to send to Paris on that 
occasion the most honourable embassy that had ever left the 


56 


ELIZABETH AND HER ENGLAND. 


shores of England. She felt now that she could trust no one 
whom she valued in a country where his life would be unsafe. 

“ With these words she left him.”* 

“ All her littleness,” on such occasions, Elizabeth may 
or may not have “lost;” but most assuredly she was 
only too far from having arrived at greatness. It was 
well enough for the court to be in mourning, hut the 
English Queen and nobles should have mourned over 
English treachery even more than over the fiendish 
cruelty of France. The fate of Huguenots and Ca¬ 
tholics had been so evenly balanced that a mere breath 
might have turned the scale on either side. So far as 
Elizabeth could see, the stability of her own throne and 
the Keformed religion all over Europe depended on the 
French marriage, or at the least on a French treaty. 
The Queen-mother was eager for the English alliance, 
and the aid of England would in all likelihood have 
secured the liberties of the Protestant subjects both of 
France and Spain. To the utter despair of her wisest 
counsellors, in her own mere caprice, in the infatuated 
stupidity of her own self-will, Elizabeth seized that very 
moment for treating secretly with Alva, and in a few 
short days the streets of every large French town ran 
deep with Huguenot blood. 

The massacre of St. Bartholomew was, after all, but a 
ghastly example of a bigotry and intolerance which, in 
the time of Elizabeth, were almost universal. The hands 
neither of French nor English Protestants were unstained 
with blood. The English seas swarmed with pirates : 
ships of Spain by hundreds were captured, and their 
crews flung into the sea ; Spanish gentlemen were 


# Froude, x. 418, 419. 





ELIZABETH AND HER ENGLAND. 


57 


publicly sold as slaves in the market-place of Dover. 
The new Israel, like the old one, was spoiling the 
Egyptians ; and unless he were a British subject, no 
Catholic’s life was safe. Even in Ireland men, women, 
and children were butchered by thousands, merely that 
their Saxon rulers might have “ some killing.” It was 
impossible that a whole people should unlearn by a 
single effort the bloody lessons which had been taught 
them for centuries under the name of the religion of 
Christ. 

Elizabeth’s ecclesiastical government was, if possible, 
more unsatisfactory and irritating than her secular rule. 
She manifested on all occasions the same headstrong 
wilfulness, never yielding till the last moment—never 
yielding with grace. From her suicidal tenderness 
towards the Catholics, she was being constantly terrified 
by the discovery of their incurable treachery; but she 
utterly abhorred the Puritans, and she lost no oppor¬ 
tunity of pouring her contempt upon her own bishops. 
It is by no means clear that she had any strong religi¬ 
ous convictions or fixed belief. It is quite plain that she 
was anxious to make the difference between the old and 
the Reformed religion as slight as possible, and to retain 
at least the possibility of a reconciliation to the Roman 
See. It is, above all, certain that she dearly loved 
power and the display of power. 

Yet, apart from the lessons of history, apart from the 
fact that even now there are comparatively few who per¬ 
ceive the absurdity, it would have seemed incredible that 
any human being could expect to control thought and 
dictate a religion to those who are capable of under¬ 
standing what religion means. Elizabeth would have 
no two religions in her realms. People might believe 


58 


ELIZABETH AND HER ENGLAND. 


wliat they chose, but she would determine for them 
what they should pretend to believe. They might have 
what they liked in secret, but in public they should only 
utter what the Queen approved. And this Elizabeth con¬ 
sidered to be a true and sufficient toleration ! This 
indeed is, and must be, the necessary condition of the 
existence of an Established Church; and the consequence 
has been that every reformation, both of doctrine and 
life, has either begun or ended outside the Establish¬ 
ment. 

When an Oxford Professor is to be heard addressing, 
amid hearty cheers, the constituents of the “ Society for 
the Liberation of Religion from State Patronage and 
Control,” we need not wonder that an historian should 
write freely his honest convictions about the ecclesiasti¬ 
cal system which we owe to Elizabeth, and the sort of 
men which that system produces. 

“ Of all types of human beings,” says Mr. Froude, “who were 
generated by the English Reformation, men like Wliitgift are 
the least interesting. There is something in the constitution of 
the Establishment which forces them into the administration of 
it; yet, but for the statesmen to whom they refused to listen, and 
the Puritans whom they endeavoured to destroy, the old religion 
would have come back on the country like a returning tide. The 
Puritans would have furnished new martyrs; the statesmen 
through good and evil, would have watched over liberty; but the 
High Church clergy would have slunk back into conformity or 
have dwindled to their proper insignificance. The country knew 
its interests, and their high-handed intolerance had to wait till 
more quiet times; but they came back to power when the chances 
of a Catholic revolution were buried in the wreck of the Armada, 
and they remained supreme till they had once more wearied the 
world with them, and brought a king and an archbishop to the 
scaffold.” * 


* Froude, x. 117. 



ELIZABETH AND HER ENGLAND. 


59 


Three “types of human beings” were generated by 
the English Reformation. To many it brought the 
relief which the opening of gaols would bring to the 
criminal classes. Old restraints were removed, and new 
harriers against crime and immorality were not yet pro¬ 
vided. When the ancient landmarks were taken away, 
and while the true boundaries were still undetermined, 
it seemed impossible to trespass. Every man had 
become a law unto himself; while the example of re¬ 
bellion against all that was most reverend was set by the 
highest and noblest in the land, and in the most sacred 
region of life. There poured over England a great flood 
of immorality and vice ; the people became so godless 
and profane that even the purest of the Reformers, such 
men, for instance, as Latimer, looked on in horror at 
the work of their own hands. It seemed to such men 
(to quote one of Latimer’s own quaint figures) as if the 
devil himself were the only true bishop in England : 
always at his post—ever working. Yet, in all this, the 
Reformation brought its own cure. It produced a new 
code of duty—a new ideal of perfection; its one great 
lesson was personal, individual responsibility; it brought 
every human spirit face to face with God. In the reign 
of Elizabeth the good seed was bearing fruit; and, in 
spite of cruelty and craft, buccaneering and ruthless 
slaughtering, the conscience of England was becoming 
clear, and moral worth was taking the place of ecclesi¬ 
astical properness. 

But while many welcomed the Reformation only be¬ 
cause it removed old barriers, there were others who 
were seeking, with the utmost earnestness, for new and 
better boundaries. They had as yet no notion that, in 
matters of divine truth, every boundary is but a gua- 


60 


ELIZABETH AND HER ENGLAND. 


rantee for falsehood. The human faculties admit of our 
receiving even a revelation from God only in many separate 
pieces and in many different forms. The very life which 
followed the law is followed itself by the spirit; and there 
is ever in the future “the Christ that is to he.” Every 
council and every creed is a confession of the fallibility 
of an earlier council and the insufficiency of an earlier 
creed. Revolutions of doctrine and ritual within the 
Church itself have been more numerous and more radi¬ 
cal than those which have broken up the Church into 
rival battling sects. The Puritans fully believed that, 
instead of an ever-receding horizon, they were advancing 
to the ultimate limit of all truth concerning God and His 
relations to man. Nevertheless they were advancing. 
To that limit, and not to Queen Elizabeth’s articles, 
they were making their way. And as to believing one 
thing and pretending to believe another—as to know¬ 
ing the truth and holding their peace about it—they 
“ could not but speaJc the things which they had heard 
and seen.” They might become martyrs—nay, alas ! 
hating the false, and despairing of the true, they might 
too easily have become utterly godless, deeming God 
Himself, as Maitland deemed Him, a “Bogie of the 
nursery,”—but neither by threats nor blandishments, 
bribes nor persecution, could they ever have .been trans¬ 
formed into Anglican bishops. 

The Establishment itself, as an Establishment, was 
and is too easily perverted into a direct premium 
on dishonesty ; and in the reign of Elizabeth it demo¬ 
ralized the Church. It could contain only the feeble or 
the dishonest; and it is easy enough to foresee the issue 
of a battle between wise serpents and harmless doves. 
The Catholics and Puritans were alike persecutors, but 


ELIZABETH AND HER ENGLAND. 


61 


they both persecuted for God. There was a kind of heroic 
glory even in their cruelties, and what they inflicted on 
others they were ready themselves to suffer. But the 
clergy of the Establishment persecuted for themselves, 
with the contemptible spitefulness of slinking cowards. 

The attempt to introduce the English Church system 
into Scotland and Ireland was utterly preposterous. 
The Irish were too savage to resist the injustice, except 
after the manner of savages. In Scotland the resistance 
was at once more civilized and more complete. But the 
mad tyranny of thrusting a new-born religion upon a 
reluctant people cost thousands of lives, and kindled a 
burning hatred tha't has never even yet been quenched. 

The Anglican Establishment had not a single claim 
upon the acceptance of the nation. It was but one 
single phase of the rapidly changing thought and feeling 
of the age. It had the recommendation neither of 
antiquity, nor of complete reconstruction, nor of the 
general assent of the people. In doctrine and ritual it 
was neither Henry’s nor Edward’s ; while already the 
better minds both in Scotland and England had passed 
far beyond it. If one could bid a liquid island stagnate 
in the very middle of a rushing stream, that stagnant 
pool with the living, sparkling waters all around it might 
be the very emblem of Elizabeth’s Church—death in 
life, an artificial and deceitful fixedness, in the midst of 
change, a pretended independent perfection refusing to 
be identified with the past or to grow into a nobler 
future. A Church which required its ministers not to 
believe, but only to conform, was sure to attract to its 
communion the least worthy of mankind. But a far 
worse result has been the consecration of dishonesty. 
It has been judged a virtue not to think, not to prove all 


62 


ELIZABETH AND HER ENGLAND. 


things, not to ask the questions which might provoke in¬ 
convenient replies. Even now, though so many breaches 
have been made through the walls with which Parlia¬ 
ment has sought to defend the Church of God,—when 
articles are signed and oaths sworn with a well-under¬ 
stood reservation, and when ecclesiastical law is either 
so obsolete or so uncertain that with the most moderate 
caution a beneficed clergyman may be a law unto him¬ 
self—even now a minister of the Anglican Establish¬ 
ment can neither enquire with safety, nor abstain from 
enquiry without dishonour. 

Mr. Froude’s history is not only derived from original 
contemporary sources, but he has introduced into his 
own work numerous and lengthy quotations from the 
letters and State papers on which his conclusions are 
based. At the cost of what may seem to some readers 
occasional tediousness, this very greatly increases the 
value of the history. The very quaintness of the 
language is itself an attraction; and the actual words of 
Elizabeth or Mary, Cecil, or the Bishop of Boss, are 
far more satisfactory than any mere summary of what 
might seem to Mr. Froude to be their meaning. Even 
readers who are in the habit of verifying references are 
glad to be spared trouble ; while, for general readers, 
notes and appendices might as well remain unwritten. 
Many of the sources of information of which Mr. Froude 
has availed himself are moderately familiar and accessible; 
while others, and especially the Spanish ones, are here 
employed for the first time. They are exceedingly 
valuable; often confirming by trustworthy, independent 
testimony what was hitherto scarcely sufficiently proven, 
and in some instances revealing new facts. 

The matter of chief interest in the new volumes is 


ELIZABETH AND HER ENGLAND. 


63 


Mr. Froude’s narrative of the proceedings in the case of 
the Queen of Scots; his account of the Northern 
rebellion; of the progress of “ religion; ” and of that 
fearful anarchy which must euphemistically be called the 
English government of Ireland. 

We have surely now heard the last of defences of the 
honour of Mary Stuart. Apart from the ridiculous 
perverseness of Elizabeth, they would never have been 
possible. The English Queen was, indeed, crue], but 
her reckless unkindness was to her friends, not to her 
chief foe. Mary she spared; it was men like the 
Regent Murray—men of rare wisdom, splendid disin¬ 
terestedness and unsullied honour—whom she left to the 
chances of war or the dagger of the assassin. No proof 
of guilt could possibly be clearer than the proof of 
Mary’s share in the murder of Darnley. Elizabeth saw 
the proofs, and recognized their damning force. But 
she was always occupied with foolish and dishonest “by 
practices ; ” and in spite of the advice of her ministers 
and her own obligations to the Scottish lords, she would 
not suffer the evidence to be published, nor a just sen¬ 
tence to be passed. 

Hence, and hence only, it became possible for such a 
book as the Bishop of Ross’s “ Defence ” to be written. 
Plausible assumptions are of little value in the presence 
of opposing facts; though Mary’s ambassador and faith¬ 
ful friend might well argue that it was incredible so 
noble and gracious a princess could have had even a 
motive to commit the foul crimes with which she was 
charged. But what are all hypotheses compared with 
the Casket letters ? As soon as the Bishop of Ross’s 
“Defence” was published, Cecil protested against its 
one abominable lie—the lie that the English nobility 


64 


ELIZABETH AND HER ENGLAND. 


had doubted the guilt of Mary. There was absolutely 
no doubt on the matter, no hesitation anywhere, not 
even in the mind of Norfolk, who shivered with horror 
as he reflected on what pillow he was scheming to lay 
his head—not a single misgiving except in the imbe- 
cillity of Elizabeth’s character. She could and she could, 
not, she would and she would not, she must and she 
must not; and the friends of Mary’s memory have only 
rewarded her self-willed folly with insult and infamy. 

The Northern rebellion convinced her at last on what 
hidden fires she was treading. In a large part of her 
dominions there was a universal discontent. Almost 
the whole nobility were implicated in treasonable con¬ 
spiracy. Even Leicester, the mean creature whom 
alone of all mankind Elizabeth seems really to have 
loved, was false—false to her, and to his country, and to 
himself. The only faithful friends she had were those 
who, for their very faithfulness, had been in constant 
danger of her displeasure. Tottering on the very edge 
of the precipice, she would suffer them to draw her back 
from ruin; but the moment she was safe, or thought 
herself safe, she would go on her old proud, reckless 
way, even if she hurled them into the abyss. She had 
to be forced, not gracefully, to permit the execution of 
Norfolk; she utterly refused to allow the attainder of 
Mary. She had her own schemes and expectations. 
France would help her, or Spain would help her—even 
the very Pope might help her; at any rate she would 
not yield. Where was this Queen’s grace ? She scolded 
her Parliaments, she insulted her Ministers, she cursed 
her friends, she blessed only her enemies. 

Her wretched parsimony was often even more mis¬ 
chievous than her paltry vanity. The “government” 


ELIZABETH AND HER ENGLAND. 


65 


of Ireland was one long shameful injustice. She would 
neither pay for energetic work, nor submit to the only 
conditions of genuine conciliation. Not even the 
Spanish Papists were more fiendishly cruel than the 
English colonists who were to have conquered Ireland 
by exterminating the Irish. Their only hope, not 
merely of reward hut of hare subsistence, was not in 
the liberality of their queen, but in their own cruelty 
and craft. 

Religion ow r ed nothing to Elizabeth, everything to 
her ministers—the ministers who were always true, and 
never trusted. She would have yielded to the Catholics, 
and did yield to them, till she was made to understand 
that such a policy was nothing else than sharpening an 
axe for her own neck. The Puritans were no doubt 
premature and embarrassing; but they were the Re¬ 
formers, the very strongest supports of the Queen’s 
throne ; and yet she hated them and thwarted them at 
every turning. She thought that men who had the 
moral courage to defy the Pope and cast off the authority 
of all Christian antiquity, would accept just as much and 
be content with just as little as a mere girl thought fit 
to give them. And yet she had enough of shrewdness 
and knowledge of the world to despise those who were 
satisfied with her own ecclesiastical system. Others 
began the great work of Reformation that Elizabeth 
hindered and which is not even yet complete. 

“ Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs 
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns. - ’ 

No earthly power can stay the progress of human 
thought and freedom ; and under the rule of the eternal 
God even death itself is but the entrance to a fuller and 
diviner life. 

F 



66 


ELIZABETH AND HER ENGLAND. 


Mr. Froude’s history is a new treasure in English 
literature, pure and vigorous in style, honest and im¬ 
partial, in sympathy with all that is good and true; not 
only a noble record of the beginnings and first fruits cf 
the Reformation, but itself the sure token that the 
whole harvest is well-nigh ready for the reapers. 


ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT.* 


The history of “ public opinion” is scarcely more than 
a history of extravagances. There are long intervals 
during which even on the gravest subjects the “ public ” 
have no opinion whatever : they leave everything to the 
Government, or to those thoughtful and energetic few 
who do the real work of society. But sometimes, and 
more frequently of late, under the stimulus of the 


* From the “ British Quarterly Review.” 

(1.) Report from the Select Committee of the House of Lords 
appointed to Inquire into the Execution of the Criminal Law, 
especially respecting Juvenile Offenders and Transportation ; 
together with the Minutes of Evidence taken before the said 
Committee; and an Appendix. Session 1847. Ordered, by 
the House of Commons, to be printed. 31st May, 1847. 

(2.) Report from the Select Committee on Transportation; together 
with the Proceedings of the Committee, Minutes of Evidence, 
Appendix and Index. Ordered, by the House of Commons, 
to be printed. 28tli May, 1861. 

(3.) Fortieth Report of the Inspectors General on the General 
State of the Prisons of Ireland, 1861; with Appendices. 
Dublin, 1862. 

(4.) Reports of the Directors of Convict Prisons on the Discipline 
and Management of Pentonville, Millbank, and Parkhurst 
Prisons, and of Portland, Portsmouth, Dartmoor, Chatham, 
and Brixton Prisons ; with Fulham Refuge, and the Invalid 
Prison at Woking. For the year 1861. London. 1862. 

(5.) Report of the Select Committee of the House'of Commons on 
the 16 and 17 Vic. cap. 99. 1856. 





68 


ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 


British press, the “ public ” does form an opinion, and 
does its best to embody that opinion in a permanent 
institution. Social problems are the most complicated 
of all problems. It would be very difficult to determine 
what would be the effect of a given set of circumstances 
even upon a single individual: it is immeasurably more 
difficult to determine what will come of the combination 
of a great number of individuals, each of whom has had 
a separate and peculiar training. What is best fitted to 
secure the interests of twenty or thirty millions of 
people, all of whom are to be allowed the utmost possible 
liberty, can be decided only by those who have carefully 
studied the nature of man and the lessons of history. 
The “public” has unquestionably studied neither the 
nature of man nor history: it therefore views all social 
questions from one side only, and mistaking one small 
part of a problem for the whole of it, its legislation and 
administration, though often most energetic, can scarcely 
fail to be extravagant. Nations may be seen passing 
with the utmost ease from despotism to anarchy ; from 

(6.) Observations on the Treatment of Convicts in Ireland; with 
some Remarks on the Same in England. By Four Visiting 
Justices of the West Riding Prison at Wakefield. 
London. 1862. 

(?.) Female Life in Prison. By A Prison Matron. Second 
Edition, Revised. Two Vols. London. 1862. 

(8.) Irish Convict Reform. The Intermediate Prisons a Mistake. 
By An Irish Prison Chaplain in the Convict Service. 
Dublin. 1863. 

(9.) Some Articles and Letters which appeared in the “ Times " 
and other Papers , on the Subject of the Treatment of Convicts . 

Longman. 

(10.) Rules for the Government of the House of Correction at 
Preston , in the County Palatine of Lancaster. Preston. 
1857. 





ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 


G9 


tlie most offensive distinctions and divisions of the 
different classes of society to liberty, equality and 
fraternity. Despotism grinds down the faces of the 
poor, crushes true merit, and lifts up the worthless into 
the high places of honour: therefore let royalty and 
nobility be at an end, and citizen embrace citizen in 
holy brotherhood. Alas ! even equality and fraternity 
have their darker side, and seem sometimes only to 
mean the right of the cruel, and idle, and strong to 
make a prey of their neighbours ; prompting some men 
to ask, 4 Were not even a strong despotism, with only 
the chance of its being wise and good, immeasurably to 
be preferred ? ’ 

Some considerable time ago, the British public was 
waked out of its entire indifference to the treatment of 
criminals, by those good men who had found out that 
our prisons and prison system were possibly even more 
wicked and mischievous than the crimes of which their 
inmates had been guilty. They perceived that such 
punishment as society was then inflicting on evildoers, 
was making them far worse than they had ever been 
before; and they thought, with Socrates in 44 The 
Republic,” that to make men more unjust can never be 
the work of justice. They found young and old—the 
youth who had committed a first offence and the incor¬ 
rigible ruffian to whom the jail had become a second 
home, the penitent and the tempter—all crowded to¬ 
gether in dens of infamy, where every kind of abomina¬ 
tion, physical and moral, attained its most diabolic 
perfection. They laid the whole dark story before their 
fellow-countrymen,' and in the name of the just and 
merciful Grod, who is kind to the unthankful and evil, 
they bade them remember that even the worst of men 


70 


ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 


did not cease to be men, and might not be punished by 
being cast before their time into a hell of malignant 
devils. They hoped it might be possible so to punish 
wicked men that they might be made good men. They 
were quite sure that it was possible to discover some 
mode of punishment by which they should not be made 
more wicked. 

This was so small a piece of a social problem that the 
British public could clearly see it, and moreover it was 
quite necessary that they should see it. It had been 
enough for them to know that a highwayman or house¬ 
breaker was somehow sent out of the way of doing 
further mischief: they now began to think it necessary 
to ask what had become of him. Capable of seeing only 
one thing at a time, they turned away from society, and 
gave tlieir whole attention to the criminal. Philanthropy 
became everything, justice nothing. Philanthropy itself 
also degenerated only too quickly into the sentimentalism 
of philanthropy. The dens of filth, and fever, and vice, 
were changed into Sir Joshua Jebb’s “ pen of pet lambs.” 
Prisons were made more comfortable than workhouses 
and the homes of the labouring and honest poor. The 
compulsory industry which, at the best, fell far short of 
the most obvious duty of the workman, was rewarded by 
gratuities; and the sentences, already too short and too 
easy, were yet further relaxed. But, at any rate, societ}- 
felt that the old method had been wrong, and that the 
new one was its opposite. Moreover, the public became 
rather tired of considering the subject; and after having- 
been waked up by the philanthropists, questioned, re¬ 
buked, teazed, puzzled by them, left the whole matter 
in their hands, and went to sleep again. Unhappily, 
the ladies and gentlemen who were accommodated with 


ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 


71 


private apartments at Millbank and Pentonville, were at 
liberty to wake up and betake themselves to their old 
friends and haunts almost exactly at the time when the 
British public was comfortably settling itself for a fresh 
period of repose, a repose to be too rudely disturbed. 
Reformed convicts let loose upon society found it ex¬ 
tremely difficult, and not a little disagreeable, to earn 
their living by hard work. To earn thirty shillings 
would have required at least six days of persevering and 
well-directed labour. To knock a man down and take 
that sum out of his pocket required only five minutes 
and a life-preserver. This new mode of “ self-help ” 
became in consequence remarkably popular, and people 
were knocked down and robbed in busy thoroughfares, 
in broad daylight, and almost at their own doors. It 
was found that the ruffians who perpetrated these out¬ 
rages, were, in very many cases, convicts who had been 
released from confinement with “ tickets-of-leave.” The 
British public had suddenly to wake up again, all the 
more irritable and angry because its sleep had been so 
soon disturbed. People seemed not disinclined to return 
to the barbarities of which the philanthropists had so 
righteously made them ashamed; and, indeed, the re¬ 
action from the sentimentalism of the last few years is 
so strong and so general, that there is no small danger 
of our becoming for a little while merciless and unjust, 
and after a little while longer more stupidly sentimental 
than ever. Yet, perhaps, a careful consideration of the 
folly of sacrificing society to the criminal on the one 
hand, and the possibility of protecting society without 
wholly sacrificing the criminals on the other, may assist 
the formation of a wise and sober judgment equally 
remote from both the extravagances into which public 


72 


ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 


opinion is so prone to swing. It may, at any rate, 
reclaim the question for the calm determination of the 
thoughtful few, whose decision will not be the result of 
the vexation of disappointment, or of that idleness which 
is content to try any new experiment for the sake of rest, 
hut of careful inquiry into the actual working of the 
system at present adopted, and a comparison of that 
system and its effects with such methods as have been 
adopted in time past or in other countries. 

Though we may at present he treating our convicts 
with too much leniency, it must not he supposed that 
life at Millbank or Pentonville offers so many attractions 
as to be a praemium for crime. It is surely not desirable 
that prisons should he dirty and ill-ventilated, or that 
prisoners w r ho have committed no capital offence should 
be slowly put to death by prison treatment. The diet of 
prisoners may require reconsideration, and it may be 
thought wise to relieve the medical officers of the respon¬ 
sibility of interfering with it except in extreme cases to 
be accurately defined. But with all the good living, and 
cleanliness, and light of the Government prisons, it is 
scarcely possible to conceive of anything more utterly 
dreary than a prisoner’s life. As we rise from the 
perusal of some of the articles which have lately appeared 
in the daily papers, we are half inclined to suppose that 
a convict would rush with eager joy to the happy abode 
which for seven or eight of the best years of his life is to 
he his home. Such a mistake would he in a moment 
corrected by actually seeing the unhappy wretch who has 
just been caged like a dangerous beast, and left to that 
worst of all solitudes, the remembrance of evil deeds 
and the knowledge that they have been all in vain. It is 
impossible to mistake the misery and disgust with which 


ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 


73 


his whole soul is filled, the bitter mortification and 
baffled rage with which he restlessly paces his narrow 
cell, and gazes upon the bars and doors which shut him 
out from the wild and jovial liberty which he had been 
so heartily enjoying. Nor is it easy to determine upon 
which class of convicts the burden of imprisonment 
presses most heavily. In these frightful abodes are to 
be found, only too often, those who had been gentlemen 
and scholars, accustomed to the refinements and luxuries 
of good society, taught to hate with too vainglorious a 
haughtiness everything low-bred and vulgar, except sin 
and crime. When the door of their cell is locked upon 
them, they know too well that for weary years they will 
scarcely be permitted to see a single face that will look 
kindly on them. They will have for companions the 
vulgarest and most brutalized of mankind, nor even with 
these will they be suffered for some time to have any 
intercourse. They must wear the prison dress and do 
the prison work, weaving coarse cloth or mats, making 
shoes or clothes, or work harder still and further 
removed from all their former training and habits. They 
will have to pace in silence every day the same dreary 
exercise-ground, till they know almost every brick in the 
walls and every pebble under their feet. They will have 
to sit in school with men who can neither read nor 
write, and whose very faces are the registers of innume¬ 
rable villainies and the deepest ignorance. This is not 
the kind of life, surely, that would attract the men who 
commit forgeries and plan and execute gigantic frauds. 
Yet possibly the prison life of the pickpocket or burglar, 
the Charley Bates or Bill Sykes of real life, may be more 
gloomy and miserable still. For such people have no 
mental resources* Imprisonment cuts them off from the 


74 


ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 


source of the only pleasures they ever knew, the 
pleasures of a wild and jolly life with companions like 
themselves ; pleasures that perhaps have been made all 
the keener by the stimulus of danger. In truth, so 
odious is convict life even in our model prisons, that as 
the warders and officers testify, it is the one unceasing 
study of a prisoner how by any chance he may effect his 
escape. 

Yet if prison life be odious, it is unquestionably meant 
to be so, and ought to be made so. The cells should be 
light, clean, well ventilated, and sufficiently warm; and 
they ought to be this, even though the cottages of the 
honest poor are not. The State cannot condescend to 
set an example of dirtiness even to criminals, or to 
imitate the habits and copy the neglects which are among 
the most fruitful sources of crime. But convicts should 
be made to work hard, and they should by no means be 
overfed. It is by no means easy to compel a convict to 
work hard. It is impossible for the most careful officer 
to determine how long a man takes to learn a trade, and 
how many shoes and trousers he can make in a given 
time. Where convicts are engaged, as at Portland, on 
what to a free labourer would be hard work, it would be 
extremely dangerous to insist on more than a moderate 
amount of labour. For it would be not less easy, and to 
many convicts more agreeable, to put a spade or pickaxe 
into the head of a warder, than into rock or soil. If a 
free bricklayer chooses to be idle, his master can dismiss 
him, and the man may take holiday as long as he likes, 
and if he thinks proper, starve himself to death. But if 
a convict bricklayer chooses to be idle, he can neither be 
dismissed nor killed ; and the longer he is refractory 
and useless, so much the longer and more heavily does 


ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 


75 


he burden society. The amount of out-door work that 
some of the correspondents of the daily press seem to 
expect from convicts, could he secured at any rate in our 
existing convict establishments, if at all, only by the 
constant presence of a strong military guard; and such 
severe punishments as neither the sentimentalism nor 
the civilization of this country would endure. Yet 
it would not seem altogether impracticable to punish the 
refractory as the idle outside a prison punish themselves. 
When a free man refuses to work, lie simply refuses to 
earn wages; and his wages are not the money he 
receives, but those things the money represents, and for 
which it will be exchanged. His real wages are bread 
and meat, and potatoes and beer, the use of a house to 
live in, clothes to wear, and the means of obtaining the 
society of a wife and providing for his children. If 
he refuses to earn wages he simply refuses to smoke his 
pipe, to drink his pot of ale, to inhabit a decent house, 
to have warm clothes, and in a while to have any food at 
all. Long before he arrives at that last stage, even the 
idle man has generally changed his mind about earning 
wages, and has discovered that though he extremely dis¬ 
likes work, he dislikes cold and hunger very much more. 
Cold and hunger are the punishments that idle and 
dissolute people inflict upon themselves ; and there 
seems no very obvious reason why it should not be 
the punishment that society might inflict upon idle 
prisoners. 

Of course prisoners whose diet had been reduced 
would become thin, and suffer as much physical incon¬ 
venience as might require in time the interference of a 
medical officer. But everybody out of work for three or 
four weeks becomes thin; and the medicine which any 


76 


ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 


physician would prescribe for such a patient would 
unquestionably be more nourishing food and plenty of it. 
The difference between a convict and an honest labourer 
ought not to be, as unfortunately it is, wholly in favour 
of the convict. The honest labourer out of work cannot 
afford a doctor, and knows quite w r ell that even if he 
could, it would be useless to ask advice which it would 
be impossible to follow. The average diet of well- 
conducted convicts can be wisely determined only by 
medical men after a sufficient number of careful experi¬ 
ments ; and the object of these experiments should be to 
discover the minimum of food, both in quantity and 
quality, which wijl suffice to keep a convict.in ordinary 
health. When a prisoner is idle and disorderly, there 
is no obvious reason why that minimum should not be 
reduced. Of course the man would become ill, but the 
cure for his illness would be the easiest and cheapest 
that could be devised, namely, work. Within the walls 
of a prison there is always work to be had, and the man 
who will not do it might safely be allowed to punish 
himself by those very distresses which all other idle 
vagabonds are compelled to suffer. The actual minimum 
at Portland (though not a tenth part of the convicts 
there are kept so low) consists— 

“ For four days of the week of 12 oz. of bread for breakfast, with 
a pint of tea; dinner, 6 oz. of cooked meat free from bone, 1 lb. 
of cooked potatoes, and 6 oz. of bread; supper, one pint of gruel, 
16 oz. of bread. On the three remaining days of the week the 
rations are better still, the breakfast being a pint of cocoa, with 
milk and sugar, and 12 oz. of bread; dinner, one pint of soup, 
5 oz. of cooked meat free from bone, 1 lb. of cooked potatoes, 
and 10 oz. of suet pudding. On this ‘ ordinary diet ’—wliich as 
daily food would be a very extraordinary one to most of our hard¬ 
working labourers throughout the kingdom—all the convicts used 



ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 


77 


formerly to live, till a few years ago, when one of the ‘ dilettante ’ 
prison philanthropists, of whom there are now so many, discovered 
that convicts, if worked hard on such diet, might lose muscle, and 
it was accordingly raised to the ‘ increased scale.’ .... In 
addition to this, all the prisoners of every grade or scale of diet 
have each 3 oz. of treacle to eat with their bread, served to them 
every week, viz., oz. on Sunday, and 1^- oz. on Wednesday. 
For such as are employed out of doors, but who are not at hard 
labour—who have, in fact, only their appetites sharpened by the 
fresh sea-breeze—there is what is called a £ light labour diet for 
the public works.’ This consists of a pint of tea or cocoa, with 
6 oz. of bread, for breakfast; 6 oz. of bread, 6 oz. of cooked 
meat free from bone, half a pint of soup, and half a pound of 
potatoes, for dinner; and 6 oz. of bread, with a pint of gruel, or 
tea, ‘ if preferred,’ for supper. What the light labour is it is hard 
to discover, especially as the ‘ hard ’ seems to be about the mini¬ 
mum of what will keep the men’s hands going at all. Stone¬ 
breaking, close under the prison walls, is one of the works that 
come under this category ; and though this work, as we generally 
see it done, is certainly not light labour, yet the way in which it 
is performed at Portland amply justifies the prison authorities in 
classing it under this head. Those who have ever seen the pile 
of stones which the wretched starving tramp has to break in the 
stoneyard of a workhouse, in payment for his night’s shelter in 
the casual ward, should come to Portland to see what the convict 
does for his day’s work. The work in the quarries is a mockery 
of ‘ hard labour,’ and the ‘ light labour,’ as the convicts do it, is 
positively not labour at all. Even taking the light-labour diet as 
the standard, no mere hard-working daily labourer in this part of 
England can command it. None certainly are so well and 
warmly lodged, or as carefully looked after in health or sickness. 
Perhaps, however, it is worth while adding that even those 
prisoners on the ordinary diet, when in their third stage, receive 
their extra allowance of bread and cheese and beer after dinner 
on Sundays, and that those in the fourth stage have not only the 
bread and cheese and beer, but the usual treacle pudding on 
Thursdays, baked mutton in lieu of beef on Thursdays and' 
Fridays, and baked beef instead of boiled on Sundays and 
Mondays. But in order to give all diets, we must give one which 
does not appear in the prison books, which is infirmary diet. 
When a convict is placed on this by the doctor, he lias, of course, 


78 


ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 


whatever the doctor orders him. When he is placed oil infirmary 
diet, through the exertions or intercessions of powerful friends, he 
can have almost what he pleases. Sir John Dean Paul and 
others were placed on this infirmary list through the exertions of 
their friends, and an exemption was also made in Sir John’s case 
from working at the quarries.”* 

: | 

This account does not differ materially from that 
given by Sir Joshua Jebb to the Select Committee on 
Transportation in 1861 (Keport, pp. 2, 8), and it may 
be compared with the dietary tables of other institutions, 
in which it is equally necessary that human beings 
should be kept in health, and in some of which their 
treatment is not intended to be penal. The treat¬ 
ment of paupers, indeed, is so utterly barbarous and 
disgraceful that no convicts would submit to it; and 
with them no Government dare venture upon it. In the 
House of Correction, however, at Preston, the prisoners are 
extremely well cared for. The new portion of the prison 
is light, warm, and well ventilated, though the cells are 
more prison-like than those at Millbank. The prisoners, 
moreover, are treated with great consideration and real 
kindness by the governor; who seems to know something 
of every individual under his charge, and is manifestly 
anxious that imprisonment should be as far as possible 
reformatory. The prisoners also are by no means 
emaciated or sickly, and in fact seem much benefited by 
their prison fare, beyond what might have been expected 
from the comparatively short term of their confinement. 
But they have no treacle, or suet dumplings, no cocoa, 
or tea, or beer, in fact none of those preposterous 
indulgences by which criminals who have been guilty of 


* Times , Dec. 20, 1802. 


ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 


79 


graver offences are coaxed into something approaching to 
decent behaviour. The dietary for adults above seven¬ 
teen years of age is as follows :— 


SUNDAY AND WEDNESDAY. 





CO 







CO 





*^5 


<X> 

O 

a; 

co 




• 


© 

O 

6 




<V 

PQ 

O 


4-» 

Cv 

V 




a 

<D 

HH 

O 


CO 



MALES. 

0) 

3 

O 

O 

Ph 

«4-» 

o 

3 

o 

0) 

r—i 

o 

Pi 

O 

FEMALES. 

pq 

O 

o 

Ph 

o 

•P 

o 

«4-< 

o 

<D 

g 

o 

a 

r—> 

o 


CO 

O 

o 

r* 

P 

Q 

CO 

<r> 

O 

co 

o 

P 

o 

CO 

o 

p 

p 

CO 

•H 

o 

CO 

s 


co 

© 

o 

r-< 

s 

o 

CO 

0) 

o 

5 

o 

CO 

o 

O 

CO 

OJ 

o 

p 

p 

O 

O 

CO 

p 

•rH 

Ph 

o 

CO 

>—* 

•rH 

Ph 

Breakfast and Supper. 
Dinner . 

6f 

6§ 

416 


2 


Breakfast and Slipper. 
Dinner . 

6| 

61 

4 

8 


i 

... 


MONDAY AND THURSDAY. 


Breakfast and Supper. 

j...|...|...| 2j... Breakfast and Supper. 

64 


| 

11 .. 

Dinner . 

6f |...l...|...|...l 2Dinner . 

6f 


1 

..h 


TUESDAY AND FRIDAY. 


Breakfast and Supper. 

6| 


...]... 

2 ...'Breakfastand Supper. 64 i... 



ii... 

Dinner . 

6| 

. . . 

161 2 

...[...'Dinner .. 6| . . 

8 

o 



SATURDAY. 


Breakfast and Supper. 
Dinner . 

6| 

6| 

4 



2 

2 

Breakfast and Supper. 
Dinner . 

6§ 

6? 

4 


dj-i 








Per Week. 

140 

12 

64 

4 

28 

6 

Per Week. 

140 

12 

32 

4|l4 3 


It may well he doubted whether high feeding does not 
tend directly to produce some of those vices which have 
so often been proved to abound among convicts, and 
much of that insubordination which has frequently led 
to most fatal consequences. At any rate “the line 
must he drawn ” somewhere ; and it should be drawn 
not by the prisoner, nor even by the prison officials, but 
by society, by those who are every way interested in 
making punishment a grim reality. The convicts 
employed in the public works earn, it would seem, 
about one penny a day more than the cost of their 
maintenance. 






























































































80 


ON CONVICT "MANAGEMENT. 


“ Wliat portion of those convicts are really earning money for 
the Government ? Some must be invalids, and some must be 
cooks, and so on.—The 3,722 at Portland, Portsmouth, and 
Chatham are all earning money. About one-fifth or one-sixtli 
would have to be deducted from that ntimber for those at school, 
invalids, cooks, &c. The maintenance of each prisoner is about 
Is. 9d. a day; and most of those at work earn Is. lOd. or 2s. a 
day, or more. All are industrious, and many more highly 
skilled. 

“ A man who is really working earns more than the cost of his 
maintenance ?—Generally they do, everything except the build¬ 
ing.”* 

From a penny to twopence a day, then, is what each 
of these convicts actually employed on hard labour would, 
if he w r ere free and working at the same rate, have to 
spend upon rent and the maintenance of his wife and 
family. What the work these convicts really do is now 
pretty well known, and has excited very much indigna¬ 
tion. It is plain, that so far from deserving gratuities, 
their very work itself is so bad and unremunerative that 
the best of it scarcely rises above the desert of punish¬ 
ment. The gratuities themselves are so judiciously 
distributed, that there was actually due to one of the 
prisoners who mutinied at Portland and who afterwards 
mutinied at Chatham, who had been only three years 
and ten months in prison, and who was returned by the 
prison authorities themselves as a had character—to this 
worthy there was actually due a gratuity of £7 9s. 8d. 
It is quite impossible to understand upon what principle 
(if any) these gratuities are given; for out of 850 
convicts who were implicated in the mutiny at Chatham, 
seventy-three are returned as of exemplary conduct, and 

640 as of “ very good ” and “ good ” conduct. Indeed, if 

» 

* Sir Joshua Jebb, Evidence, Transportation Report, 1861, p. 14. 


ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 


81 


we would get the faintest notion of what these testi¬ 
monials are worth, we must remember that prison life is 
altogether artificial; determined by laws and motives that 
either do not exist at all outside the prison, or are 
modified in ordinary life by so many important considera¬ 
tions that they scarcely deserve to be taken separately 
into account. A great number of crimes are never 
committed because the vigilance of prison discipline 
renders it impossible to commit them. The standard 
of good conduct is necessarily exceedingly low; virtue, 
in fact, consisting in freedom from impossible vices. 
Moreover, there is scarcely a single official connected 
with any of the Government prisons who is not urged by 
the strongest motives to make the very best of the system 
which he has to take part in administering. 

In the case of warders, this is plain from the evidence 
given by Sir J. Jebb himself to the Select Committee 
on Transportation :— 


“ Quest. G2. Mr. Roebuck .—I should like to understand what 
is the course of proceeding. You say that you commonly judge 
of a convict’s character from the books which are kept; 
but who keeps the books ?—Some of the books are kept by the 
governor, but every officer in charge of prisoners has his book, 
and notes down daily the industry and the conduct of the men. 
That is summed up weekly, monthly, and quarterly, and intro¬ 
duced into the proper books. 

“ G3.—So that the judge in the last resort of a prisoner’s con¬ 
duct, may be the lowest turnkey ?—No ; the lowest warder has, 
say twenty men under him. He has a book, which is ruled in a 
certain form, and he makes his note every day of a man’s 
industry; because the gratuities to be awarded to him daily 
depend on his report of the man’s industry and conduct. That is 
examined by the principal warder, again by the cliief warder and 
deputy governor, and it then comes to the governor. 

“ 04.—But does that not amount to what I say—that the 

G 


82 


ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 


person who really decides upon the conduct of the prisoner is the 
warder who sets all that down ?—No; he does not decide upon 
the case, he brings it forward. 

“ 65.—But the decision depends on what he has set down ?—In 
a great measure it may do so. 

“ 66.—Then I want to know what precautions are taken with 
regard to these warders. Their character is of course a matter of 
very great importance: do you inquire into that?—We always 
inquire into their characters. Most of them have been sergeants 
in the Guards or the Line, the Engineers or Marines. They 
come before me with their testimonials, which enables me in a 
measure to judge of their character and general qualifications. 
They are then put upon the list of candidates, and recommended 
to the Secretary of State by me as vacancies occur. They are, 
however, only appointed on probation. The governor is fully 
authorized to report, that the appointment should not be 
confirmed. 

“ 67.— Mr. Bright .—The warder having the superintendence 
of the convicts has gratuities, has .he not, which are regulated 
according to the good behaviour of those who are placed under 
him?—Yes; gratuities of 2s. 6d. to 4s., and the principal 
warder 5s. a week. These gratuities are to compensate them 
for their exposure in the open air, the vigilance which they are 
obliged to exercise in preventing escapes, having men working at 
a distance from the prison, to stimulate them to exertion, and to 
give them generally an interest in the work of the men. 

“68.—Is not the warder’s receipt of that gratuity dependent 
upon his giving a favourable turn to his report of the conduct of 
the men under him?—Not altogether; it depends a good deal 
upon the observation of those who are over him. If he sends in 
a report that his men have been all industrious, and the principal 
warder, or chief warder, sees that they have not been so, the 
warder would be reported, and his gratuities forfeited.” 


More powerful motives even than the hope of gratui¬ 
ties must he ever inclining the warders to return the 
most favourable possible reports of their prisoners. 
The “lambs” that these shepherds have to watch are, 
after all, only “ wolves in sheep’s clothing.” Their 


ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 


88 


passions are very violent; and if they are at all 
frequently reported as guilty of misconduct, they begin 
to feel that they have nothing to lose. They not seldom 
rid themselves of the man whom they regard as their 
enemy, by a ferocious attack upon him; and an over- 
scrupulous warder would walk about among his prisoners 
in constant peril of his life. Of course such insubor¬ 
dination would be punished; but the Parliamentary 
return, which cast so much light on the character of the 
Chatham mutineers, warns us not to expect too much 
from that mild chastisement. 

The superior prison officials are naturally interested 
in “ the system ” they administer; they are conscious of 
their own honest and persevering efforts to make it 
“ work ” satisfactorily; they actually do secure a good 
amount of order ; and at any cost of gratuities, coaxing, 
high feeding, and the like, it seems to them the one 
thing needful to keep their charge quiet and good 
tempered. Order in the prison is what they have to 
secure; and if that were all that society requires, it 
might with very slight difficulty be obtained. It would 
be obtained, however, most quickly and most surely by 
changing punishment into indulgence, by defeating the 
very purpose for which punishment and prisons exist. 
We should never forget that the prison treatment which 
is most beneficial to society is precisely that which gives 
most trouble to prison officials. 

The testimony, however, as to the efficiency of our 
present method of dealing with convicts, which is at 
once best and worst, truest and falsest, safest and most 
dangerous, is the testimony of prison chaplains. They 
are among the most honourable and self-denying men 
in the country. They have to deal with a class of society 

g 2 


84 


ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 


which is the most hopeless of all classes. They have, 
very properly, the utmost confidence in the power of the 
Gospel to restore even the worst of men, and make them 
fit and willing to discharge all the duties of life. But 
they seem continually to forget that in a prison the 
temptations to hypocrisy are increased, and the oppor¬ 
tunities of detecting it are diminished, to the utmost 
possible extent. Any one who is at all in the habit of 
studying the faces of human beings, may quite easily 
perceive, on visiting any jail—the Preston House of 
Correction, for instance, of which the late Mr. Clay was 
chaplain—that the men who have a little Bible lying open 
on their table are unquestionably the greatest scoundrels 
in the prison. They have that unmistakeably sneaking 
appearance which every chaplain should learn to re¬ 
cognize as the physical sign of demoniacal possession. 
But the plain fact is, that even if it were not easy to 
snivel and read the Bible, and if the temptations of life, 
which discover the real character of men, abounded in 
jail (which they do not), the chaplain’s reports ought to 
have no effect whatever upon the sentences and treat¬ 
ment of prisoners. This is necessary even for the real 
benefit of the prisoners: it is much more necessary for 
the sake of society. What lies beyond the prison in 
this world or in the next world, is the region over 
which the hopes of good men may wander in peace and 
faith. But within the limits of the jail, and during the 
term of imprisonment, the goodness which the chaplains 
should offer for the acceptance of prisoners must be 
sought for its own sake, stripped absolutely hare of those 
temporal advantages with which in ordinary cases it is 
associated. The thief, the forger, the murderer, the 
man who has shrunk from no depths of falsehood or 


ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 


85 


excesses of cruelty, that he might get money or gratify 
some ungoverned passion, would scarcely hesitate to 
affect repentance for the sake of an earlier liberty and a 
quicker return to all his old courses. In fact, those who 
have been guilty of the worst crimes are often in prison 
extremely quiet and orderly, though very often far 
indeed from being penitent. In the case of women, at 
any rate, the testimony of a “ Prison Matron ” on this 
point is decisive. One of the most orderly and “ hopeful ” 
of convicts was a woman who had murdered her child 
because it “made such a row ” in screaming. Murder 
is not, indeed, regarded as one of the fine arts by these 
amiable culprits ; but it is by no means regarded with 
horror, as one of the worst crimes that a human being 
can commit. And, at any rate, society has said that for 
its own sake, during a certain period, the evil-doer shall 
suffer ; if for his own good as well as for that of society, 
so much the better, but anyhow for the good of society, 
ftepentanee does not undo the effects of crime, and it 
does scarcely anything towards preventing the recurrence 
of it. Society, therefore, cannot accept repentance as 
an expiation, nor trust in it as a method of self-defence. 
The work of punishment is primarily for the benefit of 
society, secondarily for the benefit of the prisoner : the 
work of the chaplain is primarily for the benefit of the 
prisoner, secondarily for the benefit of society. These 
two works, therefore, not only differ, but without the 
utmost care might come to be opposed; and it should 
be remembered that prisons exist for the sake of society, 
and not for the sake of the prisoners; that the work of 
the chaplain is altogether subordinate, and would have 
to be dispensed with altogether if it interfered with the 
sterner work of the prison. It is, indeed, a terrible 


86 


ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 


necessity when it arises; but for the body politic, as for the 
natural body, “ it is better that one of the members should 
perish than that the whole body should be cast into hell.” 

It is, however, on the reports of those who can 
scarcely help taking that view of a prisoner’s conduct 
which society, in self-defence, has sternly refused to take, 
that gratuities are awarded and sentences commuted. 
A criminal is turned loose upon society before his time 
simply because he has conformed, while in prison, to a 
set of rules which in real life outside have no existence 
and would serve no purpose. When he is released he 
finds himself necessarily regarded with the utmost 
suspicion. His temptations are very numerous and very 
strong. He is very insufficiently watched. It is his 
easiest, and, perhaps, may seem to himself his only 
course, to seek out his old companions and haunts ; and 
the next time society hears of him he is charged with 
some new offence, and sent back again to be once more 
a quiet, orderly prisoner, earning gratuities, as of old, 
“ of exemplary conduct ” in every respect. 

It is now pretty generally admitted, that our English 
system of dealing with convicts is a failure: it does not 
protect society, and it does not reform the criminals. 
And if we would know both why that system has failed, 
and upon what conditions alone any system can succeed, 
we must carefully consider the very nature of punish¬ 
ment itself, and what good it is intended to effect. We 
may, indeed, he surprised, not at the number of criminals 
and the greatness of their crimes, but at the fewness of 
criminals, and the reluctance which even the most cruel 
and profligate men manifest to commit those crimes 
which are justly considered the most serious. The re¬ 
straints to which any human being is subject in any 



ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 


87 


civilized country, and especially in our own, begin with 
his very earliest days, and never for a single moment 
cease. At home he is taught from the very first, and in 
all manner of ways, that he cannot and shall not do 
what he likes. At every turning he finds that some¬ 
body else’s interests are as real and as much to be 
regarded as his own. He has to submit to the authority 
of his parents, and to deal fairly with his brothers and 
sisters : at school, or during the term of his apprentice¬ 
ship, he finds himself placed under a discipline more 
rigorous still; and w T ith every new relationship, every 
fresh desire, every development of character and capacity, 
he finds his restraints multiplied. He can, in fact, by 
no means whatever overtake them, or pass into any 
region of life in which he shall be able to escape their 
presence and power. He begins by degrees to perceive 
that he is a member of a body; that the restraints to 
which he is subjected are highly beneficial; that to be 
released from them would be the form onlv, and not the 
reality of freedom. He comes to perceive that they who 
are most truly free, are sure to be the most orderly ; and 
he learns to seek for that liberty which is the only real 
liberty which any human being can enjoy, the liberty of 
being in harmony with the spirit of law. To desire and 
to obtain that liberty is the result of a very complicated 
and long continued education, a result, moreover, which 
in many cases is never obtained at all. There are many 
people who, all their lives long, fret against the restraints 
of life, and are held back from crime not by the love of 
goodness, but by the fear of pain. But inasmuch as 
there is in every human being a brute nature, in respect 
of which he is on the level only of the beasts which 
perish; inasmuch as there are in men the wants and 


88 


ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 


desires, the passions, the rage, the ferocity, the cunning, 
which are to be found also in tigers and foxes, and all 
manner of carnivorous animals, so it is of the utmost 
importance that this brute part of a man should be 
thoroughly and for ever tamed, that lordship should be 
given to the human and the spiritual, and not the 
animal. How to do this, and especially how to do it for 
those who seem equally unable and unwilling to do it 
for themselves, is the most difficult of all the problems 
which philanthropy has to solve. To tame the beast 
and to ennoble the man in every human being, is the end 
for which so many schools have been called into existence, 
for which so many improvements have been made in the 
dwellings of the poor and their sanitary condition, for 
which also the law of God, and the Gospel of His grace, 
have been given to men, and are continually being de¬ 
clared to them by the ministers of religion. There is 
no living man in whom the human has been entirely 
destroyed; nor is there any living man in whom the 
animal ought to be destroyed , for that is needed to do 
the work of the spirit. 

But, unfortunately, there are very many human beings 
who are by no means tamed, and these constitute the 
criminal class. In so far as they are criminals, they are 
allowing the brute that is in them to conquer the man, 
and they must be treated accordingly. If a criminal 
were a mere brute, he would, of course, be treated like 
any other savage animal; he would be starved, whipped, 
tethered, muzzled, or even killed, if he could not be 
cured of biting ; and after all, a treatment by no means 
very dissimilar must be adopted for the breaking in of 
wild and dangerous men, who set society at defiance, 
and never scruple to indulge their own vicious pro- 


ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 


89 


pensities, however much harm they may do to their 
neighbours. The fact which it is especially necessary to 
remember is, that society really cannot wait to reform its 
criminal classes : it must make them as speedily as 
possible unable to do mischief, whether it can make them 
unwilling or not. The man whose house has been 
robbed, or who has been garotted and left senseless in 
front of his own door by some lawless ruffian, has surely 
a very ready and complete answer to any sentimental 
philanthropist who would persuade him that his first 
duty is not to punish the criminal but to reform him. 
“ And this place,” says the imprisoned Alvar, in Cole¬ 
ridge’s “ Kemorse,”— 

“ my forefathers made for man ! 

This is the process of our love and wisdom 
To each poor brother who offends against us— 

Most innocent, perhaps—and what if guilty ? 

Is this the only cure ? Merciful God ! 

Each pore and natural outlet shriveled up 
By ignorance and parching poverty, 

His energies roll back upon his heart 

And stagnate and corrupt, till, changed to poison, 

They break out on him, like a loathsome plague-spot I 
Then we call in our pampered mountebanks;— 

And tlris is their best cure ! uncomforted 
And friendless solitude, groaning and tears, 

And savage faces at the clanking hour 
Seen through the steam and vapours of his dungeon 
By the lamp’s dismal twilight! So he lies 
Circled with evil, till his very soul 
Unmoulds its essence, hopelessly deformed 
By sights of evermore deformity ! 

With other ministrations thou, O Nature, 

Healest thy wandering and distempered child : 

Thou pourest on him thy soft influences, 

Thy sunny hues, fair forms, and breathing sweets, 

Thy melodies of woods, and winds, and waters ! 

Till he relent, and can no more endure 


90 


ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 


To be a jarring and a dissonant tiling 
Amid this general dance and minstrelsy; 

But bursting into tears, wins back his way, 

His angry spirit healed and harmonized 
By the benignant touch of love and beauty.” 

No one will deny that this is very charming poetry. If 
we were to regard it as a part of the philosophy of edu¬ 
cation, we might admit that it is both beautiful and 
true. But if we regard it as the philosophy of criminal 
law , it is so extremely imperfect and one-sided as to be 
all but ridiculous ; while, unhappily 7 , it is precisely the 
philosophy on which sentimental philanthropists build 
their practice. A respectable shopkeeper in Sloane 
Street has been garotted in front of his own door, and a 
hideous-looking ruffian, aged forty, is brought to him, 
and immediately identified as the culprit. The Sloane 
Street shopkeeper is mildly requested to submit this 
wayward and distempered child of nature to the soothing 
ministrations of his mother, to the melodies of woods, 
and winds, and waters. In plain English, we may say, 
he is requested to send him for a few weeks to Brighton, 
or Tunbridge Wells, to buy a season ticket for the 
Crystal Palace, to take a box for him at the opera, or 
anything else of the kind, by which “the benignant 
touch of love and beauty” may fall upon him. The 
Sloane Street shopkeeper knows a great deal better. He 
replies, “ This ruffian who sprang upon my throat last 
night, has enjoyed forty years of tender ministrations. 
Thousands of times the sun has risen upon him, -calling 
him to honest labour and innocent enjoyments. As 
often the quiet night has wooed him to repose, and 
renewed his powers for fresh toil, and his capacity for 
new gladness. Through all those days he has been 
surrounded by living examples of virtue and self- 



ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 


91 


restraint; and when these have been absent he has been 
startled by the terrible sufferings by which evil-doers are 
tormented. Through all those years his weakest mo¬ 
ments have been strengthened by the supports of law, 
and the dread of punishment, and the common morality 
of mankind. Through all those years religion has been 
uttering to him more or less of her sublime promises 
and encouragements. His first misdeeds have been for¬ 
given and forgotten. And out of all these ministrations 
he has come a hardened reprobate ; and there is not the 
smallest reason to suppose that what could not keep him 
good will make him better when he has become bad. 
Meanwhile, I, unsentimental shopkeeper that I am, have 
an incurable aversion to being suffocated; and I must 
insist that this wayward and distempered child of nature 
shall be somewhere safely shut up, and receive the 
benefit of other ministrations than those which have 
hitherto proved so unsuccessful.” 

If this man be shut up, it is plain that his confine¬ 
ment in a prison should be made extremely unpleasant 
to him. His imprisonment will at the longest be far 
too short to give any reasonable hopes of a radical 
reformation. The humanity of those whom he has 
defied and injured will do what may still seem possible 
for the criminal himself; but the chief work of society 
upon him will be to tame the brute part of him. He 
must be taught that by lawless violence he will lose in¬ 
comparably more than he can hope to gain. He must 
be made to understand that assault and robbery are 
quite as painful and quite as dangerous as it would be 
to thrust his hands into a hot fire. He must be made to 
suffer so keenly that no temptation will ever again be able 
to overcome his horror of punishment. If this be accom- 


92 


ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 


plished, the man himself will be in some slight degree 
benefited; for it is better to abstain from crime from the fear 
of punishment, than not to abstain at all. But at any rate 
the benefit to society will be very considerable, even though 
the criminal be very imperfectly reformed. During the 
whole term of his imprisonment it will be safe from his 
violence, and for some considerable time afterwards he 
will hesitate to commit offences that bring after them so 
heavy a penalty. Moreover, those who were very dull 
scholars in the school of nature may learn their lessons 
much more rapidly in the school of criminal law* The 
man who has been really and severely punished will not 
fail to let his comrades know what is in store for them if 
they should be so unfortunate as to be arrested. He 
will make them clearly understand, that every one of 
their privations and miseries will be increased when once 
they are safely locked up within the walls of a prison. 

Let it be clearly understood that the primary end of 

punishment — imprisonment, transportation, and the 

like—is the good of society, and not the good of the 

criminal. Society, in fact, has no right to promote the 

good of individuals by any such rough means. Very 

many people who have committed no offence against the 

laws of their country would nevertheless be greatly the 

better for a few months’ solitary confinement; but no 

Government dare do them that service against their will. 

So, on the other hand, there are very many who dislike 

regular instruction more than thieves dislike a treadmill; 

« • 

but for all that, they are compelled to submit to it, and 
they do not consider themselves punished or disgraced. 
But though a school is often as disagreeable as a prison, 
and a prison would be to many as useful as a school, the 
two are never confounded excepting in the theories and 


ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 


93 


lobbies of sentimental philanthropists. The distinction 
between them is this : the prison is for the good of 
society, the school is for the good of the individual: the 
prison is a punishment, however comfortable or useful: 
the school is a privilege, however disagreeable or 
neglected : that which is primary in the one is secondary 
in the other, that which is secondary in the one is 
primary in the other. 

What, then, are we to do with our criminals when 
they have been detected, tried, convicted ? There is one 
class of evil-doers whose punishment indicates in the 
clearest possible way what is the real end of all the 
punishment which the State has the right to inflict. 
Those who have committed murder, or been guilty of 
one or two other crimes which are considered in an 
especial degree subversive of society, are put to death. 
This is unquestionably the most effective of all punish¬ 
ments : it renders impossible any repetition of crime by 
the particular criminal so punished, and it produces a 
terror of imitating his crime, which is in the highest 
degree wholesome. Of course when a murderer is 
hanged nobody pretends that the punishment is reforma¬ 
tory ; and it is exactly that fact, the fact that the good 
of the criminal himself is wholly disregarded, that makes 
this mode of punishment, especially among sentimental 
philanthropists, extremely unpopular. Our forefathers, 
with their rough and ready justice, were content to 
protect society and leave the criminal to God; and even 
prison chaplains, of a race happily extinct, could look 
with marvellous unconcern upon what might come after¬ 
wards, when a man was hanged up by his neck till he 
was dead. “ Within what time,” asked a judge of a 
chaplain, “ may we reasonably hope for contrition in a 


94 


ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 


condemned criminal?” “You mean,” said the chap¬ 
lain, with a cheerful confidence in his own powers of 
persuasion, “ what time is sufficient to prepare him to- 
die ? I would undertake, my lord, to prepare any man 
for death in three weeks.” * The British public echoes 
with a very marked emphasis the “ Indeed ” with which 
the judge replied: but at any rate, prepared or unpre¬ 
pared, there are many criminals who must die and take 
their chance ; and if murderers ought not to be hanged, 
a fortiori quiet citizens ought not to be murdered. Still, 
there are many crimes for which the punishment of 
death would be altogether and monstrously inappropriate. 
It is not impossible that capital punishment may be 
abolished altogether, and we shall be constrained to 
look to some other mode of dealing with those who have 
declared by their own deeds that their liberty is incom¬ 
patible with the safety of society. 

Next to death, transportation would seem at first 
sight to be the most effective mode of dealing with 
criminals; and at the present crisis it has again and 
again been recommended, in spite of very numerous 
failures in times past, and the utmost difficulty even 
now of availing ourselves of this mode of relief. The 
advantages of transportation, supposing it to be complete 
and permanent, supposing that the convicts never 
return from the countries to which they have been 
banished, and supposing, moreover, that they are quite 
unwilling to go, and supposing, moreover, that the 
people to whom they are sent are very anxious to receive 
them—the advantages are great and obvious. It would 
be to the convict a punishment, and to society a com- 

* “ Chapters on Prisons and Prisoners.” Kingsmill, third 
edition, p. 333. 


ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 


95 


plete protection. It is surely, however, very plain that 
these conditions of the advantage of that mode of 
punishment are now scarcely ever to be found. Trans¬ 
portation is not a punishment. We cannot very easily 
prevent the return of transported convicts, and there is 
scarcely one of our colonies that would be willing to 
receive them, A voyage to the antipodes is not now 
that terror and mystery that it used to be. To be taken 
over to Australia, for instance, is what thousands of 
honest labourers desire. Cheap land, abundance of 
work, and especially the gold-fields, have made emigra¬ 
tion exceedingly attractive. Moreover, there is scarcely 
a single colony which would now be willing to receive 
our dangerous classes. We could make use of trans¬ 
portation now to relieve ourselves only of the best, and 
not of the worst of our criminals; the penitents who 
might well he recommended to mercy, and not the 
incurable reprobates who richly deserve to be hanged. 
Transportation, which is not punishment, has no power 
whatever to deter men from crime ; while even to our 
own country the opportunity of hiding our criminals out 
of sight may as often be a mischief as an advantage. 
Moreover, whether it is so now or not, it very soon will 
he impossible to find any place whatever to which we can 
transport our convicts ; and the difficulty which will 
then arise may as well he met and overcome at once. 
There are considerations, however, more important than 
any of mere expediency, which should not he forgotten 
in any return to our old system of transportation. We 
send our criminals away exactly because we do not know 
what to do with them, because they are dangerous both 
to our security and morality. They are idle and will 
not work; they are dishonest and cannot be trusted. 


96 


ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 


By what right, then, do we pour out upon any one of 
our colonies this flood of vice and crime ? The relation 
of a colony to the mother-country is by no means 
regarded now as it was in the time of the American war 
of independence. The obedience of Australia or Canada 
to the imperial Government is rapidly tending towards, 
though it has not yet reached, that amount of unreality 
which in ordinary society is indicated by the expression 
“ your obedient servant.” The government of a colony 
should indeed be a strictly paternal government; that is 
to say, it should be strictly for the benefit of the child, 
and should pass from rigid law to wise advice and good 
example as the child advances to maturity. It is no 
longer possible for us, and would no longer be tolerated 
by the public opinion of the country, to say, “ Such and 
such a place belongs to us. It is a long way off. We 
will send thither all the scum and filth of our own 
•population. If the colonists there, don’t like it, it’s a 
great pity, but it can’t be helped.” The time for such 
treatment of our dependencies is for ever gone; and, 
indeed, no return to it has been contemplated, even by 
those who are looking upon transportation as our only 
source of relief in dealing with convicts. But though 
Western Australia has positively asked for convicts, and 
is really in need of labourers, it distinctly refuses to 
receive any but the very best and most hopeful; those, 
in fact, who in our own country might be safely trusted 
with freedom, especially under a system which should 
secure the fulfilment of the conditions on which tickets- 
of-leave are granted. But to supply the labour of a new 
country from the half-reformed vice and idleness of our 
own, is surely to lay a very rotten foundation for the 
future greatness of the State. With all its energy and 


ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 


97 


high spirit, there is still a certain coarseness and 
vulgarity about colonial life which is extremely offensive. 
Even the honest pursuit of wealth, though highly bene¬ 
ficial to all classes of society, needs to be subordinated to 
pursuits which are in themselves far higher, and without 
which the pursuit of wealth soon ceases to be beneficial 
and even to be honest. Many people have become exceed¬ 
ingly rich who were not even clever, but only lucky. And 
even the cleverness which is necessary for commercial 
success is extremely narrow, when compared with the 
vast capacities of the human mind and the almost 
boundless regions which lie open to the thought and 
affections of men. Rich men actually engaged in busi¬ 
ness are often, in our own country, scholars, men of the 
utmost refinement, exceedingly generous and patriotic, 
reverent and godly; and they are this because in our 
own country scholarship, literature, art, religion, have 
through many generations held the highest place in 
public estimation. Taking our whole history, the aris¬ 
tocracy of wealth is a novelty. It is a new thing that 
a man’s influence, social and political, should depend 
simply and nakedly upon the balance at his banker’s. 
In fact, this is felt to be so disgraceful a social revolu¬ 
tion, that there are many who regard wealth itself with 
a foolish and irrational suspicion, and who seem to 
imagine that commercial success involves of necessity 
the absence of those subtile and nameless graces which 
characterise the gentleman. At any rate, against the 
aristocracy of mere wealth there are in this country 
almost numberless protests, and bulwarks high and 
strong, which can be removed, if at all, only by very 
slow degrees. The court of an hereditary sovereign, the 
lords spiritual and temporal, the church, the universities, 


98 


ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 


the etiquette of the bar and of the medical profession, 
the mere sense of antiquity even—these things, and a 
thousand others, forbid that for some time to come the 
almighty dollar should he the only god of our idolatry. 
Not, indeed, that we are wholly without warning of ten¬ 
dencies towards that most debasing of all religions, the 
worship of mammon, which may make even the bravest 
cautious, if not afraid. In the colonies, however, the 
commercial element is almost everything. The personal 
influence of the court and of the aristocracy is reduced 
to a minimum ; even religion itself seems wholly eclipsed 
by its energetic and not too scrupulous rival; and it 
seems still to he considered necessary that the piety of 
the mother-country should be taxed to provide both 
clergymen and endowments for the religious edification 
of some of the most flourishing of colonial communities. 
The only thing that can preserve the commerce of the 
colonies from degenerating into selfishness and cunning, 
vulgarity and avarice, is a very high moral tone, a 
chivalrous uprightness, and a law of honour that shall 
penetrate through every part of society. Is it very likely 
that this will either he produced or even suffered to 
remain possible where a large proportion of the popula¬ 
tion consists of half-reformed convicts ? A noble 
ancestry is the source of far more good than people 
often suppose ; and to have good reason to he ashamed 
of his father is a curse and blight upon any man ; and 
no colony can hope to be very noble or high-spirited 
whose fathers have been provided for it from Millbank 
or Portland. 

The colonies, then, if any such there he, who really 
wish to receive our convicts, must he extremely short¬ 
sighted ; and it is very doubtful whether the mother- 


ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 


99 


country, with her far larger experience, could honourably 
bestow upon them so dangerous and even so fatal a gift; 
and, as has been already said, even transportation to 
Western Australia would do nothing whatever towards 
solving that problem which is just now puzzling the 
wisest among us. The convicts that Western Australia 
wants to receive are precisely those which we need have 
little difficulty in disposing of; and those whom we can 
see no way of disposing of, constitute precisely that class 
with which Western Australia will have nothing to do. 


Moreover, to find plenty of work for a liberated convict, 
and an easy road to prosperity, is not a punislipaent, hut 
a reward. The men whom this fate awaits are not 
“ liable,” hut as Sir Joshua Jebb says, “eligible” for 
transportation. Of transportation, then, we may per¬ 
haps venture to say, that at the best it is extremely 
inadequate to meet our present if not our future necessi¬ 
ties. As a punishment it would in many cases be 
entirely useless, and it is tending to become after no 
long time in every case impossible. 

There remains, then, for our criminal classes, 
imprisonment in our own country; and it is not difficult 
to perceive some, at least, of those conditions which may 
he expected to render imprisonment effective, primarily 
for the protection of society, and secondarily, wherever 
it may be possible, for the reformation of the criminal. 
In the case of imprisonment for life, society is com¬ 
pletely protected from the prisoner himself, and the 
conditions of such an imprisonment will he determined 
by two considerations : first, how to benefit society by 
deterring from actual crime all that unhappily large 
class of imperfectly tamed human beings who are always 
standing on the edge of it; and then, how to improve 


H 2 


i 


L. of 0. 


100 


ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 


the criminal himself. Such imprisonment, therefore, * 
must he made unmistakeably penal and painful. Though 
it is to end only with the life of the prisoner, it must he 
from first to last a discipline of sorrow. There must be 
no single moment in its whole duration in which an 
honest man sorely tempted to take the wages of sin 
shall have the slightest excuse for desiring it. Its 
maximum of comfort must be, if possible, a little below 
the minimum of comfort which the poorest honest man 
may reasonably expect. And inasmuch as however 
turbulent a prisoner may become he will never be set at 
liberty excepting to be carried to his grave, the faintest 
trace of rebellion, the slightest outburst of insubordina¬ 
tion, should be visited with immediate and severe 
punishment, by solitude, darkness, temporary starvation, 
or flogging. This may no doubt sound extremely brutal 
to anybody who fails to consider that it is precisely the 
brute part of a man that imprisonment and its accompani¬ 
ments are intended to tame ; or who does not remember 
that society is greater than the individual, and must be 
preserved, even though every criminal should be destroyed. 

A prisoner confined for life should be made clearly to 
understand that for him the jail is henceforth his world, 
that no good behaviour will ever in this world advance 
him out of it, and that excepting the narrow strip of 
experience that lies between the maximum and minimum 
of prison comfort, he must regard the rewards of amend¬ 
ment and the fruits of reformation as purely spiritual 
and personal, consisting in the delights of a good con¬ 
science, a sense of reconciliation to God, and in Him to 
all good men, and the hope of that better world where 
the discipline of suffering shall be no longer needed. To 
such a one a prison chaplain may devote his tenderest 


ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 


101 


care, and present without hesitation or douht the noblest 
promises of Christ’s religion; and such a one, finding 
even in this life and his own bitter experience that 
mercy and truth have met together, may come to regard 
even his imprisonment as the cross that Christ bids him 
take up, and as that death which is in fact only the 
being horn into a true life. 

But only a minority of criminals can he imprisoned 
for life. After a certain number of years the majority 
will he set at liberty, and their imprisonment should he 
‘ of a kind to teach them such lessons as they will never 
afterwards forget. The chances of their reformation it 
is extremely difficult to estimate; for while on the one 
hand those whose terms of imprisonment are short may 
he presumed to be the less criminal and therefore the 
more improveable class, yet on the other hand their 
short term of imprisonment means also a short term of 
discipline and instruction. But in this case, as in all 
others, the good of society must be first considered. 
Perhaps it might be possible to devise some expedient 
by which, while the disgrace of a first and short 
imprisonment was lessened, its pain should be rendered 
exceedingly acute. 

It is almost wholly on the reformatory and secondary 
side of punishment that we need examine the value of 
rewards, gratuities, commutation of sentence, and so 
on. Gratuities should in every case be strictly earned. 
A free labourer can earn enough to keep not himself 
only, hut also his wife and family. A prisoner ought 
to he compelled, if possible, to earn at least as much as 
will keep himself and pay the rent of his cell. When 
he does more than this, it might then as a matter of 
favour be determined that, if his conduct were other- 


102 


ON CONVICT MANAGEMENT. 


wise satisfactory, a portion of his surplus earnings 
should be reserved for his own use when he is dis¬ 
charged, or devoted to the use of those, if there be any, 
who by his misconduct and imprisonment have been left 
to poverty or the parish. The earnings of a prisoner 
should be strictly calculated, and he should be credited 
according to what he really does, and not according to 
what an average workman might be fairly expected to do. 

It should he clearly understood that whatever privi¬ 
leges or relaxations may be thought necessary, a man’s 
imprisonment should last during the whole time . 
specified in the sentence of the judge. A convict 
released with a ticket-of-leave should be made clearly to 
understand that he is still a prisoner though he wears 
no distinguishing badges, and that every policeman he 
meets is one of his jailers. There might be many 
modifications of police-supervision by which its effec¬ 
tiveness might be increased and its vexatiousness 
diminished ; but nothing can excuse the scandalous 
negligence which has turned loose on the metropolis 
and the great towns of the kingdom a swarm of dan¬ 
gerous ruffians who might quite easily have been 
watched and put back into prison long before they had 
committed any serious new mischief. Even the existing 
laws, if thoroughly executed, furnish far better safe¬ 
guards than any which society for some time past has 
been suffered to enjoy. Anyhow—Sir Joshua Jebb or 
Sir Walter Crofton, English system or Irish system, 
transportation or hard labour at home—let it he fairly 
understood that the good are in all cases to he preferred 
to the had, peaceful citizens to thieves and cut-throats, 
and genuine beneficial results to theoretic perfection 
and the completeness of “ a system.” 


MODEL SERMONS.* 


Preachers seem very slow to avail themselves of the 
advice which has lately been lavished upon them by the 
“ secular” press. Religion and daily life are perpetually 
coming into contact, in spite of solemn warnings and 
endeavours more or less honourable to keep them com¬ 
pletely separate. Such journals as The Times and the 
Saturday Revieiv , though they very frequently pass their 
judgments upon the Church, and sometimes even upon 
theological dogmas, do so always under protest, and as if 
graciously condescending to the weaknesses of common 
mortals. There are many people in a Christian country 
who, for some reason or other, spend a good deal of their 
time in reading the Bible and in the worship of God. 

* From the Journal of Sacred Literature , July, 1864. 

Sermons on Our Lord Jesus Christ, and on His Blessed' Mother. 
By liis Eminence Cardinal Wiseman. Dublin: James Duffy. 1864. 

Sermons on the Manifestation of the Son of Ood; with a 
Preface, addressed to Laymen on the present position of the 
Clergy of the Church of England, and an Appendix, on the Testi¬ 
mony of Scripture and the Church as to the possibility of pardon in 
the Future State. By the Rev. J. Llewellyn Davies, M.A. 
London and Cambridge: Macmillan and Co. 1864. 

The Divine Treatment of Sin. By James Baldwin Brown, B.A. 
London : Jackson, Waiford, and Hodder. 1864. 

Sermons preached in Manchester. By Alexander Maclaren. 
London and Cambridge: Macmillan. 1863. 




104 


MODEL SERMONS. 


Moreover, it has somehow come to pass that the Church, 
represented by certain lords spiritual, is an Estate of the 
Realm. It has its place in Parliament, vast possessions, 
and a status perhaps higher than any other, excepting 
that of the Sovereign. Indeed, not a few of the Queen’s 
prerogatives belong to her as Head of the Church ; while 
in fact the law refuses to separate the Church from the 
nation. And so the leading journals are compelled to 
humour those little weaknesses which are able to express 
themselves so strongly. The dis-establisliment of re¬ 
ligion would require a change, root and branch, of all 
English law and administration. Whether for good or 
for evil, it would unquestionably alter the royal prero¬ 
gative, the constitution of Parliament, and the general 
feeling of Englishmen about religion. Englishmen 
might he better or worse for the change, hut they would 
certainly he different. Religion, therefore, must needs 
he discussed in the leading journals; not indeed on the 
Divine side, as the mystic bond which unites the spirits 
of men with Him who made them in His own image, hut 
on the commercial side, as a thing the nation pays for 
with hard cash. The priest and the policeman are 
equally needed, bought, paid for, tolerated, dismissed, at 
the nation’s will; and for that reason they both alike are 
subjected to the criticism of that noble institution the 
British press. 

But in the superabundance of its benevolence the 
British press has sometimes condescended to give such 
advice to the ministers of religion as might prevent their 
being ignominiously dismissed hy the people who pay 
them their wages. “You are a poor stupid set,” says 
the echo, if not the voice, of public opinion ; “ hut really 
if you would not mind acknowledging it, and remaining 


MODEL SERMONS. 


105 


true to what you must know is your character, we don’t 
mind trying to put up with your silliness. The fact is, 
we don’t care a straw about anything you say to us ; but 
Sunday is an extremely slow day, and we shouldn’t in 
the least know what to do with it unless w r e went to 
church. But we never dream of going to church to be 
made to think, to be teased and worried and argued 
with ; much less do we go to church to he told how to 
manage our daily business, and upon what principles to 
buy and sell and get gain. A silly sermon is of course 
entirely uninteresting, but it doesn’t irritate us; we can 
sit quietly for twenty minutes till it’s over, and he 
thankful that once a week at least we are relieved from 
the anxiety of consulting price lists and telegrams, and 
required only with moderate decorum to listen dreamily 
to subjects which may be either true or false without our 
losing a single penny.” 

“ On the whole, therefore,” say some of our leading 
journals, “ it is decidedly better that sermons should he 
silly and stupid ; people go to church to rest, to he 
comforted, to be, as it were, gently patted on the back 
and sent home again in peace. If a man has spent 
thousands of pounds in advertising lies in every news¬ 
paper in the British empire, he must no doubt have 
suffered considerable anxiety; and how extremely cruel it 
would be in any minister of religion, when what the poor 
victim mainly requires is consolation and repose, to 
torture him by the ungenerous insinuation that adver¬ 
tising lies is only one of the many ways in which men 
break the commandment, ‘ Thou shalt not steal.’ And 
the fiery bigot, who all through the week has been per¬ 
suading himself that the perfection of religion consists 
in hating all those persons who differ from himself in 


106 


MODEL SERMONS. 


tlieir opinions about innumerable difficult and abstract 
propositions, does not go to God’s house to be reminded 
that i God is love, and whosoever loveth is born of God; ’ 
on the contrary, he expects to be reminded that * the 
zeal of God’s house is eating him up,’ and that to hate 
the prodigal son is the quickest road to the affections of 
his Father. And the timid believer who is so entirely 
uncertain about the foundations of his own faith that he 
dares not on any consideration ask what they are, expects 
to be told that all is safe and calm, and that every rash 
enquiry and unholy denial has been long since hushed to 
silence. Why don’t the ministers of religion humour 
these little weaknesses, and let pious people have their 
own way ? They are not paid for troubling Israel, why 
not let people be at peace?” That is the question 
which the secular journals have asked so often. 

The four books whose titles are at the head of this 
essay are a clear proof that, whatever the secular press 
may think, the ministers of religion believe that they 
have something more to do in this world than to receive 
wages; that in fact their work would remain exactly 
what it is, though it would be harder for themselves to 
do it, if they received no wages at all. One is by a 
Cardinal; another by an Anglican Rector; another by a 
Congregationalist; another by a Baptist; and all these 
preachers are men of note, among the leaders of the 
several sections of the Church to which they belong. It 
would indeed be ridiculous to assert that these volumes 
contain fair samples of the preaching which may be 
heard every Sunday in church or chapel. They are very 
far indeed above the average. Nothing can exceed the 
imbecility of the sentimental twaddle which is un¬ 
fortunately to be heard in nearly every Roman Catholic 


MODEL SERMONS. 


107 


pulpit in this country. Even in the English Church 
there are many country parishes in which the wearied 
listener can scarcely fail to be lulled to sleep by the dull 
monotony and empty verbiage of his appointed instructor. 
And there are conventicles where sermons are preached, 
of which it is the very highest merit that no human 
memory can retain them. And in all sections of the 
Church there are only too often extravagances of 
fanaticism, outrages upon taste and decorum and re¬ 
verence, which are immeasurably more mischievous than 
the utmost barrenness of clerical imbecility. But none 
of the sermons in the volumes before us are feeble or 
common-place. Widely as they differ from each other, 
and widely as their authors differ from each other, there 
is an unmistakeable earnestness and ability; a know¬ 
ledge of much truth and anxiety to communicate it; a 
conviction that godliness is the foundation of human 
blessedness, and that there is a blessedness which we 
may build upon that foundation; a belief that G od and 
man, separated as they seem to be by an infinite distance, 
are yet divinely united—there is this, and much more 
than this, in which they all agree. And it must not be 
forgotten that if sermons such as these are rare and 
exceptional, an average sermon is as near to the best as 
it is to the worst, and that there are as many sermons 
above the average as there are below it. Nothing is 
gained by pretending that preachers are better and wiser 
than they really are; and less still, if possible, is gained 
by refusing to acknowledge the merits they really possess. 

The sermons of Cardinal Wiseman are, unfortunately, 
not likely to be read by many Protestants; even the very 
title of them, Sermons on our Lord Jesus Christ , and 
on His Blessed Mother , would be sufficient to repel 


108 


MODEL SERMONS. 


almost every Protestant reader. For this exaltation of 
the Virgin Mary is precisely the feature of Romanism 
for which an ordinary Protestant in our own day has least 
toleration. The political mischiefs of Popery, the foreign 
supremacy which it implies, and its everlasting meddling 
with the internal and private affairs of every nation in 
which it is dominant—these things, which chiefly roused 
the indignation of our forefathers, and which they were 
determined at any cost to he rid of, have been for us so 
completely destroyed that we have almost forgotten that 
they ever existed. Moreover, the coitus of St. Mary is 
one of those differences, one of those marked character¬ 
istics of Romanism, which not even the most superficial 
observer can fail to perceive. In the Oxford Declaration, 
and in the unrighteous decisions of the University in the 
case of Professor Jowett, there is precisely that as¬ 
sumption of infallibility, and that determination to put 
down opposition, not by force of reason, but by some 
form, more or less refined, of physical force, out of which 
every Romanist error could, and out of which, if left 
alone, the worst of Romanist errors unquestionably 
would, arise ; and yet neither the Oxford Declaration 
nor the mean and shabby injustice of the University to 
the Regius Professor of Greek, would have been possible 
without the energetic and enthusiastic co-operation of 
the evangelical party. But every evangelical clergyman, 
by virtue simply of having two eyes in his head, can see 
an image of the Virgin and Child if he goes into a Roman 
Catholic chapel; and as he looks upon what he cannot 
but regard as impiety and idolatry, it is not impossible 
that the same evil spirit may visit him which possessed 
the cruellest of the inquisitors, when they tortured and 
burned the bodies of men for the good of their souls. 


MODEL SERMONS. 


109 


Yet, surely, it is worth while to reflect that all power is 
of God; and that everything which lives, lives by virtue 
of what is good in it, not by virtue of what is evil. A 
naked, unsophisticated lie is almost as rare as perfect 
truth ; nay, it is probably more rare. Even superstition 
must have some foundation of reverence for that which 
ought to be above us. It is not the object of this essay, 
and it is wholly unnecessary, to repeat those arguments 
against the Romanist cultus of St. Mary, which have 
long ago satisfied every intelligent Protestant. But 
many arguments offered by Protestants who are not 
intelligent are very far indeed from being satisfactory, and 
are completely demolished in Cardinal Wiseman’s ser¬ 
mons. Surely in this even the narrowest bigot should find 
cause for thankfulness and rejoicing. We ought to be 
devoutly thankful when we discover that even those of 
our fellow-Christians whom we believe to be in error, 
are not so much in error as we supposed they were. It 
may seem to us dangerous and profane, and even idola¬ 
trous, to reverence the Virgin as the Roman Catholic 
Church reverences her; but it should be some consolation 
for us to discover that the Roman Church does by no 
means reverence her as it reverences Almighty God. If 
we have sometimes thought that not only in pictures and 
images, but even in the thoughts and affections of 
Roman Catholic Christians, the Virgin is greater and 
more beautiful than the Child, we ought to be thankful 
to be assured that her greatness, and beauty, and love 
are regarded as the effect and continual revelation of the 
love and glory of Jesus Christ. If, out of reverence to 
the Bible, we often wonder how Christian people can 
believe what seems to us incredible, and fail to perceive 
what seems to us obvious, we oujrlit to be glad to learn 


110 


MODEL SERMONS. 


that their beliefs and disbeliefs are not the rejection of 
Holy Scripture, but only interpretations of it which 
differ from ours. If we sometimes think that they too 
confidently attribute infallibility to the traditions and 
councils of the Church, and to the successor of St. Peter, 
we should candidly acknowledge that they regard such 
infallibility as the illumination of that Spirit whom 
Jesus Christ promised that He might lead the Church into 
the whole truth. And if we reject as unauthoritative the 
explanations of Cardinal Wiseman, we should, at any 
rate, be candid enough to hold him no longer responsible 
for those errors which in plain language he repudiates. 

The cultus of the saints, though it has unhappily 
degenerated into superstition, yet rests like so many 
other superstitions on genuine reverence and love. It is 
the Church’s testimony to the fact that Christ has 
abolished death, and that in Him heaven and earth, the 
seen and the unseen, are united. It is the Church’s 
testimony that the nearer God’s children come to Him 
the more perfectly they love one another; and do God’s 
commandments, hearkening unto the voice of His Word. 

“ Your mother, the Church, will tell you,” says Cardinal Wise¬ 
man, “ as you read the names in the Catholic Calendar , ‘ These 
are my children; this is the birthday to life, to true and eternal 
life, of a brother of yours, a child of mine, nursed in the same 
bosom that bore you, fed with the same milk which has given 
vigour to you, taught by the same mouth from which you have 
learned; this was a child of mine, to whom his Lord and Father 
gave five talents, and sent away to a distant region from Himself, 
or rather He withdrew Himself from him, and those talents by 
his trading he has doubled in the sight of his Lord ; he has been 
a merchant, and has laid up for himself treasures in heaven, 
where the moth consumes not, and the rust destroyeth not. It is 
a St. Francis, who gave up all for Christ, that he might the more 
completely win and embrace Christ; it is a St. Vincent of Paul, 


MODEL SERMONS. 


Ill 


who, whatever were the riches which the great ones of the world 
poured into his open arms, lavished them again with no less open 
hands on the poor of Christ, and, for all that he cast awa} r , laid 
up ten times the amount in heaven: this is the child far away 
from us, whose birthday we commemorate. And the other, this 
was Lawrence or Stephen, a child full of ardour, and zeal, and the 
love of God, who went forth to fight His battles ; who fought, who 
conquered and triumphed, and he now reigns glorious in heaven, 
and his name is a very benediction in the mouths of all.’ And 
you come and tell me that it is folly to think more of them, that 
they are dead, and for ever gone, whose bones are crumbled to 
dust, whose souls have forgotten men. And I ask in return, Is it 
your opinion that heaven is a place in which, whatever is honour¬ 
able to man, whatever is most precious to his soul, whatever is 
most beautiful in his nature, alter the corruption of sin has 
defiled it, that love, in short, which is the very nature of God, is 
a thing not only unknown there, but banished thence, and never 
to be admitted ? Tell me, then, that you consider heaven to be a 
place in wdiich the soul is to be employed for eternity, in looking 
or diving into the unfathomable abyss of love which God is, and 
seeing that that love is a love not merely sleeping and inactive, 
but exercising itself in ten thousand ways, with all the resources 
of infinite power, and yet believe that in that ocean you must not 
love what God loves. 

“ Tell me that you believe heaven to be a looking into the face 
of Christ, and there wondering for ever at the infinite love, and 
tenderness, and mercy, and compassion, and affection beaming 
from it, and those wounds received that men might be redeemed 
at such a price.—Tell me, that it consists in the happiness of 
loving your Saviour for what He lias done for man, and endeavour¬ 
ing as much as possible to be like to Him, and that yet you must 
contrive not to love that which is the very spring of all which you 
admire in Him, and endeavour not to be like Him in that in 
which He is most amiable to us. For there He is interesting 
Himself for men, showing His wounds, and pleading still by them 
with His heavenly Father, and are we to understand that we 
must not join in such an office, and must not take delight therein ? 

_Tell me how you understand heaven to be the association of 

holy souls, imited by a bond of the strictest mutual love forming 
their very life, and yet when one who has been dear to you on earth 
comes into that same happy region in which you enjoy bliss, it is 


112 


MODEL SERMONS. 


to be understood that you will receive him as a stranger, you will 
know nothing of him, and it will be a glory to you that your heart 
is unfettered by the ties of duty, gratitude, or love?—Tell me, 
have you accepted heaven from God on these conditions ? Have 
you insisted that when your soul has been called forth from this 
earth, and you are to ascend to heaven, that instant—that 
moment, it is your intention—for if it is God’s will it ought to be 
—to forget child, and wife, and parent, and to care no more for 
them ? Oh, if the precept of renouncing father and mother and 
whatever we love on earth for Christ’s sake, be not truly the 
price for which we obtain a hundredfold enjoyment hereafter, 
hard, indeed, would be the condition, were it thus made the 
terms, not for obtaining more, but for losing even that for 
ever! ” * 

There is a truth in this extract which neither Romanist 
nor Protestant can afford to lose, and w r hich the nar¬ 
rower forms of Protestantism are in great danger of 
losing. If heaven he a state of inactivity and forget¬ 
fulness, it is unquestionably a misfortune for any earnest 
and loving man to go there. There is a great abun¬ 
dance of reasons why our reverence for those holy men 
and women who have passed out of this world—nay, 
why even our belief that they love and are eager to help 
those who are still struggling with the difficulties, and 
often losing their way in the mist and darkness of the 
world—should take a very different form of expression 
from that which we find in the Roman Church. But it 
would be far better even to ask the intercession of de¬ 
parted saints on our behalf, as we continually do ask the 
prayers of those holy men and women who are still 
living in our midst, than that we should believe that 
death has power to rob God’s children of their love, and 
zeal, and work. In fact, we attach far too great import- 




* Pp. 296—299. 





MODEL SERMONS. 


118 


ance to death, as the controversy now so earnest about 
the future state of the wicked only too clearly demon¬ 
strates ; we are in great danger of regarding it as a vast 
gulf, which not only the love of man, but the love of God 
Himself, is unable to cross. There are not a few divines 
who seem to believe that it changes not only the circum¬ 
stances and accidents of human beings, but even the very 
essence of human nature; so that after death, suffering can 
bring no regret, punishment no improvement, the know¬ 
ledge of what sin really is no repentance, the love of God 
no hope, the redemption that is in Christ no salvation. 

There is a large part of Cardinal Wiseman’s teaching 
which seems to us to rest upon a very slender foundation, 
either of Scripture or reason; indeed, it is to him no 
valid ground of objection to any doctrine whatever, that 
it is wholly irrational and unintelligible. But even for 
the wildest doctrinal follies, he must have some founda¬ 
tion ; and it may astonish many Protestants to learn, 
that a foundation which, in any case, is to him completely 
satisfactory, is the Bible. Not, indeed, the Bible inter¬ 
preted according to the whims and fancies of ignorance 
or prejudice, for that would not be the Bible at all; but 
the Bible interpreted by the wise and learned, and by the 
tradition not of yesterday, not of new sects, come newly 
up, which our fathers knew not, not of some one nation 
or race, but by that which covers the whole earth and 
reaches back to the beginnings of Christendom. And 
surely this is only a more emphatic and more consistent 
form of the same teaching which is common among 
ourselves, which is implied in the work of the ministry 
and the vocation of the preacher. * 

* The extract that follows in the text must be taken, not as the 
authoritative teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, but only at 

I 





114 


MODEL SERMONS. 


“ For all troubles of the mind and spirit,” says Cardinal Wise¬ 
man, “there is refreshment in Jesus. Come unto Him, when 
now entered upon His heavenly mission, Fie teaches the multi¬ 
tudes, or opens to His apostles the mysteries of faith. And how 
are ye to come to Him ? By deep and earnest study of His holy 
Word, wherein, as it were, His whole image is reflected, read in 
humility, docility, and disinterested readiness to obey His calls, 
rendered fruitful by fervent and persevering prayer; by listening 
to His Word, as expounded to you by His ministers, gladly 
receiving such lights as may serve to guide you towards the 
settling of your doubts, seriously weighing such evidence as may 


the most as Cardinal Wiseman’s opinion of what his Church does 
not forbid him to teach. But no Cardinal can overrule the 
decrees of the Council of Trent, which has long ago determined 
the use that the faithful may make of the Holy Scriptures: 
“ Praeterea ad coercenda petulantia ingenia decernit, ut nemo, 
siicE prudentise innixus, in rebus fklei et morum ad sedificationem 
doctrinse Christianae pertinentium, sacram Scripturam ad suos 
sensus contorquens, contra eum sensum, quern tenuit et tenet 
sancta mater ecclesia, cujus est judicare de vero sensu et inter- 
pretatione Scripturarum sanctarum, aut etiam contra unanimem 
consensum Patrum ipsam Scripturam sacram interpretari audeat, 
etiamsi hujusmodi interpretationes nullo unquam tempore in 
lucem edendse forent. Qui contravenerint per ordinarios de- 
clarentur, et pcenis a jure statutis puniantur”— (Sessio iv. Becret. 
de editione et nsu Sacrorum Librorum). The following is the 
English translation of one of the Buies of the Congregation of the 
Index, as published in 1564 in pursuance of the decision of the 
Council of Trent. 

“ Inasmuch as it is manifest from experience, that if the Holy 
Bible translated into the vulgar tongue be indiscriminately 
allowed to every one, the temerity of men will cause more evil 
than good to arise from it; it is, on this point, referred to the 
judgment of the bishops or inquisitors, who may, by the advice 
of the priest or confessor, permit the reading of the Bible trans¬ 
lated into the vulgar tongue by Catholic authors, to those persons 
whose faith or piety they apprehend will be augmented, and not 
injured by it; and this permission they must have in writing. 
But, if any one shall have the presumption to read or possess it 
without such written permission, he shall not receive absolution 



MODEL SERMONS. 


115 


be laid before you in candour and charity, however opposed to 
your former opinions, thankfully accepting such explanations and 
representations as may correct the prepossessions instilled by 
ignorant or mistaken teachers. For thus we learn that, even in 
His lifetime, they who wished to come unto Jesus with advantage 
were not content to stand aloof, following Him in the crowd, nor 
yet ventured to approach directly, and of themselves, before Him; 
but rather ‘ came unto Philip, who was of Bethsaida of Galilee, 


until he have first delivered up such Bible to the ordinary. Book¬ 
sellers, however, who shall sell, or otherwise dispose of Bibles in 
the vulgar tongue, to any person not having such permission, 
shall forfeit the value of the books, to be applied by the bishop to 
some pious use, and be subjected to such other penalties as the 
bishop shall judge proper, according to the quality of the offence. 
But regulars shall neither read nor purchase such Bibles without 
a special licence from their superiors.” At the same time, it 
ought not to be denied that there is a certain flexibility about the 
practice of the Roman Catholic Church, especially in Protestant 
countries, which is a real benefit, however inconsistent it may seem 
with many of the Romanist pretensions. Infallibility and 
science, infallibility and intellectual liberty and culture, are wholly 
incompatible; and the fate of the Home ancl Foreign Review 
must surely have done something towards convincing English 
Catholics of that fact. But a Bible without note or comment, is, 
on the one hand, impossible, because every translation in itself 
implies a commentary; and on the other hand, it is undesirable, 
because the most ignorant people require to be taught not to 
repeat, parrot-like, mere words of Scripture, but to get at the 
real meaning of those words. It is impossible for any English¬ 
man to begin the study of the Holy Scriptures without a bias in 
one direction or another; and, besides that, the Bible, though 
above all other books “ it is not for an age, but for all time,” was 
actually produced at a remote period, and in places far distant 
from those we live in, and in the midst of social and political 
surroundings wholly unlike those w r ith which we are familiar. 
The study of the Bible, therefore, must necessarily be far more 
fruitful under judicious guidance. If we teach men that it is one 
of their most solemn duties to read the Bible from one end to the 
other, "we ought to provide them with such assistance as shall 
make the understanding of the Bible possible and easy. 

i 2 



116 


MODEL SERMONS. 


and desired him, saying: Sir, we would see Jesus’ (John xii. 21). 
And thus, likewise, will the ministry of His servants, however 
unworthy, often procure a speedier and happier acquaintance 
with Him, and readier access to the peace and refreshment of 
His knowledge, than your own direct and unaided efforts."* 

Many of the sermons published in the volume before 
us were preached by Cardinal Wiseman in Rome, by 
command of the Pope, Leo XII, on the Sundays from 
Advent to Easter. “ The course of sermons annually 
prescribed went over a limited portion of the year, 
comprising always the same Sundays, the same feasts, 
and the same ecclesiastical seasons. As has been inti¬ 
mated above, it commenced with Advent and ended with 
Lent. Hence the same Gospels, those read during a 
few months only, had to suggest topics for the sermons. 
Hence the only great mysteries of our Lord which the 
ecclesiastical calendar brought under the contemplation 
of the faithful, were those of the infancy and the 
passion.” f 

And these are precisely the mysteries which require 
the firmest and most delicate handling. The denial of 
Christ’s humanity is, in fact, the denial of Christianity ; 
while, on the other hand, it is possible so to present to 
men the earthly life of Jesus Christ, that they shall be 
constrained to know Him only in that way in which St. 
Paul affirms that we should no longer know Him—that is, 
“ after the flesh.” It is possible to present the incar¬ 
nation to the intellect and imagination of men in such a 
manner as virtually to deny that it was expedient for the 
disciples that Christ should go away. Not to mention, 
for the present, the exceedingly coarse form in which 


* Pp. 128, 129. 


t Preface, p. v. 





MODEL SERMONS. 


117 


Cardinal Wiseman presents to us the doctrine of 
Christ’s propitiation, his whole account of the earthly 
life of Jesus is far too sensuous. It seems often to 
degrade, not God only, but even humanity. His ac¬ 
count of Christ’s passion resembles more than anything 
else those ghastly images of the crucified Saviour which 
shock and disgust us in almost every Roman Catholic 
church. It is by no means certain that the physical 
sufferings of Christ were greater than those of many of 
His disciples, and the mental sufferings of our Lord are, 
I think, as will appear further on, entirely misunderstood 
and misrepresented by Cardinal Wiseman. Moreover, 
exactly in proportion as our attention is directed to the 
fact that Christ was a real man, precisely in the same 
proportion are we reminded that His body must have 
been subject to those laws to which all human bodies are 
subject. However severely wounded a human being 
may be, he cannot possibly lose more blood than his 
body contains; and the physical agonies, and especially 
the loss of blood, upon which Cardinal Wiseman dwells 
with repulsive minuteness in his description of the 
Saviour’s passion, would have been possible only if the 
body of Jesus Christ had been wholly different from the 
ordinary bodies of men. Not only is Cardinal Wise¬ 
man’s account repulsive and incredible, but it is widely 
different from the New Testament narrative. We read 
in a not undisputed passage in St. Luke/ “ His sweat 
was, as it icere, great drops of blood falling to the 
ground.” But, accepting this verse (which I have, at 


* Luke xxii. 44. Wanting in A, B ; but the passage is found 
in the Codex Sinaiticus, and Lachmann retains it in the text 
(1843). “Nec sane ignorandum a nobis est et in Graecis et in 



118 


MODEL SERMONS. 


any rate, no doctrinal reason for hesitating to accept), 
how widely it differs from the following :— 

“ Look at tlie agony of your Saviour, and see how, in it, His 
sweat is blood! Yea, and blood so profusely shed, without 
wound or stroke, as to flow upon the ground ! 

“ There are plants in the luxurious East, my dearly beloved 
brethren, which men gash and cut, that from them may distil the 
precious balsams they contain; but that is ever the most sought 
and valued which, issuing forth of its own accord pure and un¬ 
mixed, trickles down like tears upon the parent tree. And so it 
seems to me, we may, without disparagement, speak of the 
precious stream of our dear Redeemer’s blood, when, forced 
from His side in abundant flow, it came mixed with another 
mysterious fluid. When shed by the cruel inflictions of His 
enemies, by their nails, their thorns and scourges, there is a pain¬ 
ful association with the brutal instruments that drew it, as 
though, in some way, their defilement could attaint it. But here 
we have the first yield of that saving and life-giving heart, 
gushing forth spontaneously, pure and untouched by the unclean 
hand of man, dropping as dew upon the ground. It is the first 
juice of the precious vine, before the wine-press hath bruised its 
grapes, richer and sweeter to the loving and sympathizing soul 
than what is afterwards pressed out. It is, every drop of it, ours; 
and, alas ! how painfully so ! For here no lash, no impious palm, 
no pricking thorn hath called it forth; but our sins, yes, our sins, 
the executioners, not of the flesh, but of the heart of Jesus, have 
driven it all out, thence to water that garden of sorrows ! Oh, is 
it not dear to us ? Is it not gathered up by our affections with far 
more reverence and love than by virgins of old was the blood of 
martyrs, to be placed for ever in the very sanctuary, yea, within 
the very altar, of our hearts ? ” * 


Latinis codicibus complurimis vel de adveniente angelo vel de 
sudore sanguinis nil scriptum reperiri.” A bloody sweat is not 
physically impossible; though every red-coloured fluid is not 
blood, even if it be were! dpo/ipoi a'lfxaros. Bengel says: “ Vis 
particuke, weret, cadit super 6popj3oi, non super alparos, ut patet 
ex epitheto ejusque plurali, KciTafiaivovres.” But in the Sinaitic 
Codex the participle is in the genitive singular. 

* Pp. 209, 210. 



MODEL SERMONS. 


119 


This gorgeous rhetoric would, perhaps, not be alto¬ 
gether unpleasing if it were employed upon a subject less 
wonderful and divine ; but it presents to us the suf¬ 
ferings of Christ in such a way as to degrade Him, and, 
scarcely less, to degrade ourselves. The same objection 
may he urged against the Cardinal’s Pastorals on 
Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jems Christ , published 
in an appendix to his volume of sermons ; and against 
every one of those ceremonies in the Romish Church of 
which Devotion to the Sacred Heart is a type. But it 
is not simply profane, it is in every way ridiculous, to 
attribute the love of Jesus Christ to His heart rather 
than to any of the other vital organs of His body. It is 
all very well to speak of the love of Christ’s heart in a 
metaphor, but everybody knows that the heart has no 
more to do with the affections than the lungs have ; that 
whenever our foot slips from metaphor, in matters of 
this sort, we fall down instantly into absurdity. A 
picture of Jesus Christ with the actual, physical heart 
exposed to view, is simply disgusting; and I cannot 
help regarding the word-pictures of Cardinal Wiseman 
as even more disgusting. Are we really to turn away 
from the loving Jesus Himself to a clot of gore, and try 
to persuade ourselves that that does somehow partake of 
Christ’s divineness ; and would deserve, if we could dis¬ 
cover it, to be treasured up by us, or worshipped as the 
holiest of relics ? When we are asked in this coarse 
way to know Christ after the flesh, we must not be afraid 
of irreverence if we straightway reply that, as mere blood, 
the blood of Christ is no diviner than that which we may 
find described in any book on human physiology; that 
which any chemist could analyse ; that which ought, with 
utmost celerity, to he buried out of sight. Such 





120 


MODEL SERMONS. 


teaching as Cardinal Wiseman’s on matters of this sort, 
produces, in those who believe it, a very mischievous 
sentimentalism; and in some who disbelieve it, a very 
dangerous loathing and contempt for sacred things. 

His description of Christ’s scourging, and the actual 
crucifixion, is even more disgusting than that of the 
agony in the garden of Gethsemane :— 

“ There seems to be no mercy, no pity, for Jesus, either on 
earth or in heaven. He is abandoned to the anger of God and 
the fury of man; the executioners surround Him with savage 
delight, and shower on Him their cruel blows till He is covered 
with blood, and gashed and swollen over all His sacred body ! 

“ See, now, how the brutal executioners proceed to the task of 
inflicting cruel torment upon your dear Redeemer. Having 
bound Him to the pillar, they deal their furious blows upon His 
sacred shoulders, back, chest, and arms. First, His tender flesh 
swells and inflames, then the skin is gradually torn, and the 
blood oozes through; gashes begin to be formed, and wider 
streams pour down in profusion. At length every part is covered 
by one continuous bruise; gash has run into gash; wide rents 
meet in every direction, and flesh is torn in flakes from the bones. 
One wretch succeeds another in the cruel work till they are tired, 
and their patience, though not that of their victim, is ex¬ 
hausted. . . But another scene of extraordinary barbarity yet 
awaits us. The soldiers have exhausted the power which the 
law put into their hands; but their fierce desires are not ex¬ 
hausted. They know that Jesus is charged with declaring Him¬ 
self King of the Jews, and they proceed to make this just claim 
the ground of a strange mockery. They prepare for Him a new 
unheard-of diadem, woven of hard, sharp thorns, and place it upon 
His sacred head. Then they press it down on every side, till its 
points pierce the skin and penetrate His flesh. Now, behold 
your Saviour still further disfigured and dishonoured. Before, 
His body had been torn, but even the scourge had respected His 
venerable head ; but now this is assailed by this invention of 
ingenious cruelty, which, under the repeated strokes of the reed 
given Him for a sceptre, and taken from His hand, changes its posi¬ 
tion, and inflicts at every blow a new or a deeper wound; His hair is 
all entangled in the knotty wreath, and clotted with His sacred 


MODEL SERMONS. 


121 


blood; His fair temples and noble forehead are strained and 
pressed down by it, while it shoots its points into them, and 
opens so many fountains of life, waters of salvation, springing 
warm from His affectionate heart. See how they trickle dow r n, 
first slowly, then in faster and thicker streams, till His sacred 
face and neck are streaked with blood, which running down over 
His body, mingles with that flowing from the gashes of the 
scourge. . . 

“Consider, now, the cruel torments which our dear Jesus must 
have endured during His three hours’ remaining on the cross. . . 
From head to foot He is one wound ; His head, if it press against 
the cross, is gored by the points of the thorns, which are thus 
driven deep into it. Truly now are verified, in their truest and 
saddest sense, His plaintive words, ‘ The Son of Man hath not 
where to rest his head.’ His shoulders and back, which are 
pressed necessarily against it, are flayed and torn with the inhu¬ 
man stripes which have been inflicted upon Him. Against these 
open wounds does this cruel bed press, so that any change of 
posture, so far from relieving Him, only increases His sufferings, 
by grating upon and rending wider the blisters and gashes with 
which He is covered. But let us not lose sight of those four 
terrible, but most precious wounds whereby He is fastened on the 
cross. Each of His hands, each of His feet, is transfixed by a long 
black nail driven into it with violence, and every moment, by the 
natural gravitation of His body, tearing wdder and wider the rent 
it has made. Oh ! what a smarting, torturing pain—what an 
unceasing suffering during three hours of crucifixion! Who, 
dear Jesus, shall be able to recount all that Thou sufferedst for 
me in that short space? 

Such teaching as this is, however, the consistent and 
natural result of Cardinal Wiseman’s doctrine of the 
atonement; so far, at least, as we are able to determine 
what that doctrine is from this volume of sermons. 

“ Hitherto, my brethren,” he says in his sermon on the “ Cha¬ 
racter and Sufferings of Christ in His Passion,” “we have viewed 
in the person of our suffering Saviour the ‘ High Priest, holy, 


* From the sermon, “ Meditation on the Passion,” pp. 205—232. 




122 


MODEL SERMONS. 


innocent, nndefiled, separated from sinners, and made higher than 
the heavens’ (Heb. vii. 26); we have now to consider Him in the 
very opposite character, as the victim charged with the iniquity 
of the whole people. We have heard His appeal that none 
could convict Him of sin ; we have seen that appeal more than 
justified in His passion, by the conduct of His adversaries and the 
perfection of His own character; we have now to behold Him, in 
spite of this personal innocence, doomed to die by the decree of 
His own Eternal Father, as overcharged with a debt for sin. 
The sentence of men was, indeed, unjust, which condemned Him 
as a criminal; that of the Father just, as all must be which He 
commands : and so strong is the contrast between these two 
simultaneous sentences upon earth and in heaven, that it appears 
as if even the small particles of equity which lingered here below 
after the first fall, were now withdrawn from earth in order that 
the ■whole powers of this attribute might be concentrated with 
greater force in the Almighty arm. It fell from heaven, undi¬ 
vided, upon the head of this devoted victim. . . When, at length, 
the fulness of time had come, this’ voluntary victim, who was to 
expiate the sins of all, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, stands ready 
to receive the fatal doom. Two things were necessary to ac¬ 
complish His great purpose ; that He should take upon Him the 
offences which He has to atone, and that He should present an 
equivalent for the debt due to Divine justice for them. 

“ In the. Garden of Olives the first condition begins to be ful¬ 
filled. As the fatal moment prescribed for the commencement of 
His sufferings arrives, His character and feelings undergo the 
dreadful change. He is no longer regarded by His Father as 
that beloved Son in whom He expressed Himself well pleased, 
from the cloud of Mount Tabor; or whom He had a few days 
before glorified by a voice from heaven. Instead of this, He sees 
before Him a culprit, upon whose head lie all the iniquities of 
men; all the foul idolatries, and the horrible abominations of the 
pagan world; all the rebellions and treasons of His favourite 
people; and what is still more grievous, the black ingratitude of 
those who should taste the fruits of His redemption. Each of 
the ingredients, every particle of this mass of turpitude, excites 
His abhorrence in an inconceivable degree; they are now, for 
the first time, accumulated upon one subject, and bury from His 
sight the high dignity of Him whom they oppress. Hence all 
those feelings which they must- excite in Him are no less con- 


MODEL SERMONS. 


123 


centrated against this representative of crime; the indignation 
which sent a flaming sword to chase our first parents from 
Paradise, the wrath which drowned in one deluge the entire race 
of man, the detestation which rained fire and sulphur upon seven 
cities, these have all at length found one common channel into 
which they can pour their burning stream, and so satisfy a 
craving justice, till now only partially allayed. 

“ Oh ! what a corresponding change does this cause in the soul 
of our dear Redeemer ! . . . He sees His pure soul, incapable in 
itself of the slightest defilement, now hideously disfigured by 
millions of abominable crimes, more odious to Him than death. 
Abashed and degraded, He sinks upon the earth. His mental 
sorrow is necessarily connected with another dreadful suffering, 
the simultaneous anticipation of every torment inflicted upon Him 
through His passion. For, as He has to bear the iniquities of 
the entire race, so must He beal- those of His persecutors ; and, 
in reviewing them all, He necessarily suffers the pangs, by in¬ 
flicting which they are to be committed. He feels Himself 
charged with the treason of Judas, and with the apostasy of Peter. 
Every blasphemous word to be uttered against Himself is a stain 
which now defiles His soul. Thus does He rehearse in His mind 
every part of the bloody tragedy which has immediately to com¬ 
mence, bearing at once its sufferings and its guilt. Each blow 
upon His sacred head, not only drives deeper the wreath of thorns 
which encircles it, but inflicts a far more racking wound in the 
guilt of sacrilegious profanation which it lays upon Him. Every 
stroke of the guilty hammer, which forces the nail into His 
tender palm, not only rends its quivering fibres, and convulses 
His sensitive frame, but transfixes His soul with a keener anguish, 
by the impiety against God’s anointed which it adds to His bur¬ 
den of sin. He considers Himself a fallen and a rejected 
creature ; and this deep sense of degradation generates an anxious 
timidity hitherto unknown in His conduct. Oh, how is He 
changed from what we have always hitherto beheld Him! He 
has left all His disciples, except three, whom He selects to be the 
companions of His agony. ‘ Stay you here and watch with me.’ 
He dreads the eyes of even these three favourite disciples, whom 
He has selected to be His companions, and He retires from them 
in order to pray alone. Three times He returns to receive some 
consolation from them, and to derive some support from their uniting 
with Him in prayer. Alas ! He used to be their consolation and 



124 


MODEL SERMONS. 


support, He used to exclaim to them, ‘ Ye of little faith, why do 
ye fear?’ Yet now He must recur to them for like encourage¬ 
ment, and even in this is doomed to disappointment. How 
different His prayer from that poured forth in the days of His 
joy ! ‘ 0 my Father, if it is possible, let this chalice pass from 

me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wiliest.’ What, 
then ! Is Thy will no longer to do that of Him who sent Thee, 
that Thou shouldst distinguish between them? Where is now 
that confidence with which Thou wert wont to exclaim, ‘ Father, 
I know that thou hearest me always ’? (John xi. 42). Why this 
conditional, this diffident, this so frequently repeated prajrnr ? 

“Because He feels Himself changed into another man; He 
calls out as an unworthy sinner, and as such He is unheard. 
Even an angel from heaven is necessary to support Him in His 
excess of agony. Oh, what a change again is here! The 
heavenly spirits did indeed amfounce His conception, and sing 
hymns of joy and glory at His birth; they came and ministered 
to Him after His rigorous fast. But that they should have to 
descend upon such an errand as tliis, to console their Master, and 
support Him in His sufferings, this surely is a service never an¬ 
ticipated by these faithful ministers of His will. O Lord, what 
wonder, that with this complicated agony, Thy limbs should fail, 
Thy pores should break open, and Thy agitated, bursting heart 
should impel its streams with unnatural violence through Thy 
trembling limbs and body, till its precious drops gush through 
the skin, and bathe Thee prostrate on the ground, in a sweat of 
blood! ‘ Surely He hath borne our infirmities, and carried our 

sorrows.and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us 

all.’ (Isaiah liii. 4—6.)” 

This is precisely the heathen doctrine of sacrifice. It 
represents God as requiring to he propitiated ; exacting 
from man, or from his representative and surety, the 
uttermost farthing. It is indeed impossible for any 
Christian completely to forget that God is love; and 
therefore, with the additional aid of the doctrine of the 
Trinity, even the grossest and most heathen form of the 
doctrine of propitiation may be made to appear Christian. 
If the Father exacts the penalty, the Son pays it, and 


MODEL SERMONS. 


125 


the Father and the Son are one ; and thus the righteous¬ 
ness of the Father is reflected upon the Son, and the 
love of the Son upon the Father. But this can only 
be accomplished at the cost of a triple heresy. The 
doctrine of sacrifice that requires this kind of explanation 
and support is itself heathenish, however carefully its 
heathenism may he disguised. The separation of the 
Father from the Son, which is required by the one ex¬ 
acting, and the other paying, the penalty of man’s sin, 
is really a “dividing of the substance” of God; while 
on the other hand, the attempt to demonstrate that both 
the exaction and the payment of the penalty are by one 
and the same Divine Being, does truly “ confound the 
persons.” The great creed of Christendom is the 
Nicene Creed, a creed included in the liturgies of all 
Christian churches that have liturgies. This is the 
creed recognized by the Council of Trent, as the one 
sure foundation against which the gates of hell should 
never prevail.* If, indeed, the creed is little more than 
an expansion of the baptismal formula, “In the name 
of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,” 
it does most unmistakeably declare that the Son is “ of” 
the Father, and not the Father “of” the Son. The 
glory of Christ’s sacrifice consists in this, that it is the 
life of a perfect Son of God ; always with perfect know¬ 
ledge, and love, and trust, doing the Father’s will. 
According to the Scriptures, at least according to the 
teaching of St. Paul and St. John, Jesus Christ is the 
very man, the head of every man, of whom all men 
participate, in whom they were chosen before the foun¬ 
dation of the world, and created to ail good works. He 


# Sessio Tertia, Decretum de Symbolo Fidei. 




126 


MODEL SERMONS. 


is moreover represented to us, not only as a living soul, 
but as a life-giving Spirit. Hence, as comprehending 
all humanity in Himself, He is represented as offering 
to God that perfect oblation which alone could satisfy 
Him, the oblation of the whole human race, perfectly 
good, and obedient, and loving. Even that oblation 
would be surely insufficient, would be scarcely better 
than fictitious, if He who offered it had no power to im¬ 
part life, and to make men actually become what they 
ought to be. His life on earth is in fact represented as 
the first-fruits of the harvest of humanity ; “ Christ the 
first-fruits, and then those of Christ, at His appearing,” 
the members of His body, the separate individuals of 
the race which is what it is by reason of its relation to 
Him. Hence the sacrifice of Christ is the very model and 
pattern of all human nobleness ; it blesses us by being re¬ 
peated in us; by our “knowing the fellowship of Christ’s 
sufferings, and being made conformable to his death” 
This is beautifully expressed by Mr. Davies in his 
sermon, entitled, “ The Shadow of the Passion on the 
Life of Jesus.” 

“ The glory of patience, and self-oblation, which Jesus claimed 
as Divine, was not to be appropriated by Him exclusively. He 
would go first, but His sheep who knew Him and heard His 
voice were to follow Him. It was, therefore, a matter of earnest 
and affectionate concern to the heart of Jesus that His disciples 
should see Him, without dismay, walking upon this road, and 
should prepare joyfully to follow Him. The passage I have read 
for our text reminds us that, immediately after the declaration of 
the sufferings which He was about to meet in fulfilment of His 
Divine mission, Jesus delivered the solemn warning, ‘ If any man 
will come after me, let him denjr himself, and take up his cross 
and follow me.’ There was a special truth in these words for the 
disciples to whom they were spoken, and to them they were 
primarily addressed. No one could become a faithful follower of 


MODEL SERMONS. 


127 


Jesus without being prepared to renounce everything, without 
carrying his life itself in his hand. And the first desire of Jesus 
in speaking those words was, undoubtedly, to make Peter and 
the rest of his companions understand clearly the absolute degree 
of the self-sacrifice which they must make in spirit, if they would 
be thoroughly associated with the Leader in whom they believed. 
He was going before them bearing His cross, submitting before¬ 
hand to the ignominy and pain which were, to be openly realized; 
He was thus submitting, not in spite of His Divine nature, but 
because He was the perfect Son of the righteous and loving 
Father. If His disciples would cherish the high ambition of 
being His friends and followers, if they would look forward to the 
joy and the crown by which true sacrifice was to be rewarded, 
they also must tread in the steps of the Master, they must be 
content to serve and submit, they must gird themselves to the 
unreserved offering of themselves to God.”—pp. 250, 251. 

Very different indeed is the doctrine of the sacrifice 
and atonement of Christ preached by Cardinal Wise¬ 
man. It removes the sacrifice of the Son of God to an 
infinite remoteness from the duties and blessedness of 
those whom He came to save. It is a cup of which they 
cannot drink, a baptism with which they cannot be 
baptized. Nay, it was offered for this very purpose, 
that they might not be required themselves to offer it. 
It is the payment of a debt: the endurance of suffering 
equivalent to that which otherwise the wicked must 
have themselves endured. If the suffering had failed 
to be equivalent, some portion of our sins must have 
been unforgiven : some part of their penalty must, by 
ourselves, have been endured. With such a theory, 
every buffet, every lash, every thrill of agony, every nail, 
every thorn, every drop of blood becomes of vital im¬ 
portance. We cannot estimate the quality of Christ’s 
sufferings; it seems far more possible to determine and 
to rejoice in their quantity. 


128 


MODEL SEEMONS. 


It is extremely easy to excite the feelings of an 
audience by laboured and minute descriptions of the 
physical pain which Jesus endured; but precisely the 
same feelings are excited by a similar description of any 
acute pain. It is by no means necessary for this pur¬ 
pose that the pain should be endured by the innocent. 
The agonies of the impenitent thief must have been far 
too horrible for their minute verbal description to be 
tolerable. Even by the mere rules of the art of poetry 
or rhetoric such horrors are excluded. 

“ Ne pueros coram populo Medea trncidet, 

Aut human a palam coquat exta nefarius Atreus, 

Aut in avem Procne vertatur, Cadmus in anguem. 
Quodcuuque ostendis milii sic incredulus odi.” * 

The picture language of Cardinal Wiseman is evidently 
intended to supply the place or deepen the effect of 
paintings, and images, and scenic representations. All 
these appeals to the mere bodily senses prevent, so far 
as they are successful, our perception of the moral and 
spiritual significance of the sufferings of our Lord. 
And what is there in this side of Christ’s sacrifice, 
taken alone, either of life or light ? It is to us neither 
example nor power. We are not required to submit to 
the scourge and be nailed to the cross. It is not the 
physical torment of Jesus which illumines and quickens 
us, but His filial spirit and the perfection of His 
brotherly love. 

And what vestige of authority is there in Scripture or 
reason for asserting that in any sense whatever, and for 
a single moment of time, the Father was angry with the 
Son ? In the unfathomable mystery of the incarnation, 


# Horace, Ars Poetica , 185—188. 




MODEL SERMONS. 


129 


the Eternal Word condescended to be made in all things 
like unto His brethren : like them in all things which 
do not contradict and destroy the divine family. 
“ Being found in fashion as a- man,” He does not 
shrink from the lowest depths of human grief. He 
shares the experience and conquers the temptations of 
those “ who walk in darkness and have no light.” He 
knows that utter loneliness of soul which even the 
holiest saints have often felt, and which they regarded 
as the inexplicable hiding of God’s face. “ Take thy 
plague away from me, I am even consumed by means of 
thy heavy hand.” “ My way is hid from the Lord, my 
judgment is passed over from my God.” “ My God, 
my God, look upon me; why hast thou forsaken me, 
and art so far from my health, and from the words of 
my complaint ? ” Therefore must Jesus Christ also be 
exceeding sorrowful, even unto death; praying with 
strong crying an'd tears, “ Father, if it he possible, let 
this cup pass from me;” exclaiming in His agony, “My 
God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ? ” But we 
may surely affirm, that if there was a moment when the 
Father loved the Son better than at any other time, it 
was when He was dying on the cross. “ Therefore,” 
said Christ, “ doth my Father love me, because I lay 
down my life.” And notwithstanding His desolation of 
soul, He cried, “Father, into thy hands I commend my 
spirit; and when he had said this he gave up the 
ghost.” To men, indeed, He might seem even as a 
root out of a dry ground, without form or comeliness ; 
and they might esteem Him stricken, smitten of God, 
and afflicted. But all that Christ was suffering was hut 
the doing of God’s will; and if the Father were angry 
at that, then vice and virtue, piety and blasphemy, may 

K 


180 


MODEL SERMONS. 


as well change places for ever. Never for one single 
moment was Jesns Christ regarded by God as a sinner, 
or punished as a sinner, or suffering as a sinner, or any¬ 
thing in any sense whatever as a sinner. Between 
Christ and sin there -was an infinite distance; and the 
one Being in the universe who was farthest removed of 
all from the possibility of forgetting that, was God the 
Father. If these imputations of what is personal and 
untransferable were possible, then every pain that Jesus 
Christ suffered might easily have been spared; and to 
inflict any pain upon Him would have been the cruel 
caprice of reckless tyranny. If a thing can be made 
what it is not by simply choosing to regard it as what it 
is not, the whole human race might have been redeemed 
by a Divine hypothesis. 

But in truth, neither in Scripture nor in reason is 
there any room whatever for such unrealities as these. 
If a man he a bad man, no mere hypothesis, either 
human or Divine, can possibly make him a good one. 
If a man be a good man be will not cease to be a good 
one, in any sense whatever, simply because be is treated 
as a had one. And such coarse theories of the pro¬ 
pitiation and atonement of Christ as Cardinal Wise 
man’s divert our minds from the real significance of 
Christ’s sufferings, and prevent our perceiving what 
that really is which pleases and satisfies the Almighty. 
He is not satisfied by tbe sufferings of His prodigal 
children, but by their return home and the renewal of 
their obedience and love. “ As I live, saitli tbe Lord, 
I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked ; ” and if 
the death of Christ had been but tbe death in another 
form of tbe wicked, we may well believe that God would 
have had no pleasure in that. What Christ offered to 


MODEL SERMONS. 


131 


the Father was not the death of the wicked, hut the life 
of the righteous; and the pain, in which alone that 
oblation could be offered, was the agony of love and 
goodness in the midst of sin and hatred, and assuredly 
not the torture inflicted by an inexorable Deity. “With¬ 
out the assumption of an imputation of our guilt, and in 
perfect harmony with the unbroken consciousness of 
personal separation from our sins, the Son of God, 
bearing us and our sins on His heart before the Father, 
must needs respond to the Father’s judgment on our 
sins with that confession of their evil and of the 
righteousness of the wrath of God against them, and 
holy sorrow because of them, which were due—due in 
the truth of things, due on our behalf though we could 
not render it, due from Him as in our nature and our 
true brother—what he must needs feel in Himself 
because of the holiness and love which were in Him— 
what He must needs utter to the Father in expiation of 
our sins when He would make intercession for us.”* 

It must not be supposed, however, that either Cardinal 
Wiseman, or those who accept the same theories of 
atonement and propitiation as his, are in the least 
degree willing to accept all the logical consequences 
which follow from those theories. I have not the 
smallest doubt that the passage quoted a few paragraphs 
back from Cardinal Wiseman’s sermon, “ On the 
Character and Sufferings of Christ in His Passion,” is 
both unscriptural and blasphemous; but I am very far 
indeed from thinking that Cardinal Wiseman is a blas¬ 
phemer. He does not really mean what he says, though 
he thinks that he does ; he does not think, though he 


* Campbell, “ On the Nature of the Atonement.”—pp. 137, 138. 

K 2 



182 


MODEL SERMONS. 


says so, that Jesus Christ was in any sense guilty of the 
denial of Peter, or the treachery of Judas, or the cruelty 
of those who nailed Him to the cross. He does not 
really believe that moral qualities are transferable; for, 
indeed, the greatest part of his practical teaching is 
founded upon the fact of personal responsibility, and 
that God will judge every man according to his works. 
He is quite as much in earnest when he speaks of the 
boundless grace of God, and the perfect and unalterable 
sympathy between the Father and the Son, as he is 
when he says that God “ sees before Him in Jesus 
Christ a culprit upon whose head lie all the iniquities of 
men ; ” and that “ each of the ingredients, every particle 
of this mass of turpitude, excites God’s abhorrence in an 
inconceivable degree.” We cannot believe, at the same 
time, in God’s perfect satisfaction with the Son and His 
abhorrence of Him, in the spotless holiness and im¬ 
measurable turpitude of Jesus; and, when these two 
contradictions are put together in the same sentence, or 
in the same paragraph, we may indeed read the w T ords, 
hut they convey to us no meaning whatever. That, in 
fact, is precisely what is meant when we are told that 
these contradictions are a mystery which the human 
intellect is not permitted to meddle with. That truth 
which is present most constantly to the mind of Cardinal 
Wiseman, as it is to the mind of every Christian teacher, 
is the love of God, His readiness to forgive sinners, 
His perpetual operation in nature and in the human 
spirit for the regeneration of the evil, His union with 
the Son, His infinite satisfaction with Jesus Christ, and 
His revelation in Him of His own righteousness and 
love. Everything that is opposed to this truth Cardinal 
Wiseman holds in abeyance, utters in language incon- 


MODEL SERMONS. 


133 


sistent and unintelligible, or even self-contradictory, and 
only sometimes half believes. 

But while the critic is bound to separate the man from 
his doctrines, it is his plain duty, and in fact one of the 
most important parts of his work, to expose, and, if 
possible, correct all errors of doctrine, whoever may hold 
them. To represent the Father as, in any sense, angry 
with the Son; to represent Christ as in any sense 
whatever a sinner; to teach that virtue and vice, sin and 
righteousness, are transferable qualities ; this seems to 
me utterly unwarranted by Scripture, wholly irrational, 
and extremely dangerous. No religion ever has been 
built upon such doctrine ; and the only religion which 
could he huilt upon it would fill both heaven and earth 
with confusion and anarchy. 

There is very much, therefore, in Cardinal Wiseman’s 
sermons that I neither believe nor admire; but on the 
other hand, their style, though far too gorgeous, is often 
exceedingly beautiful after its kind. He has lived far 
too long in England, and occupied far too conspicuous a 
position among us, to be unaffected by that spirit of 
Protestantism which is dominant in our country. Again 
and again he solemnly warns his hearers that they should 
distrust their own reason, and remember that the 
mysteries of God are far too vast for human comprehen¬ 
sion. But notwithstanding these warnings, he himself 
condescends to explain, to argue, to offer proof, to answer 
objections. He must do his best even to commend in¬ 
fallibility to our reason ; and he has learned that human 
spirits must be won and persuaded, and that the sub¬ 
mission which is not of the will is worthless. Moreover, 
it cannot be denied that there is this manliness in his 
sermons. He is perfectly well aware that, in the judg- 


34 


MODEL SERMONS. 


ment of Protestants, many Catholic dogmas are so 
extremely ridiculous as not even to be worthy of refuta¬ 
tion. The majority of English people are no more likely 
to trouble themselves with transubstantiation and the 
immaculate conception of the Virgin, than with witch¬ 
craft or alchemy, or the old systems of astronomy. 
Insane people occasionally wander about the country, 
even in our own days, who imagine that they are able to 
demonstrate that the earth is a flat surface and the centre 
of the whole universe ; but nobody notices them ; their 
arguments remain unanswered, not because they are un¬ 
answerable, but because they are contemptible. Cardinal 
Wiseman knows perfectly well that the most prominent 
dogmas of his own Church are treated in exactly the 
same way. But he, in effect, says to his hearers, it is at 
once dishonest and useless to hold the doctrines of your 
Church in a cowardly, half-hearted way ; the glories of 
St. Mary, the divine mystery of the holy Eucharist, the 
infallibility of the Church, are to be affirmed all the more 
emphatically where men disbelieve and deride them. 
Be true to your professions and beliefs ; if you are true 
to them, if you live and work as good Catholics should, 
your own consciences will he more clear, your persecutors 
will be abashed and confounded; the true wisdom will 
he justified of her children ; and men will begin to per¬ 
ceive that God has built His Church upon a rock, 
against which the gates of hell shall not prevail. This 
is very good advice for anybody ; for real life is that sure 
test by which every form of falsehood must in the end 
he detected. 

It is very instructive to compare the sermons of 
Cardinal Wiseman with sermons on the same or kindred 
subjects in the other volumes whose titles are at the 


MODEL SERMONS. 


135 


head of tliis essay, especially those of the Rev. Llewelyn 
Davies. It is very instructive, for instance, to compare 
Cardinal Wiseman’s sermon on “ The Incarnation and 
Birth of Jesus Christ,” with Mr. Davies’s on “ The 
Power of the Divine Infancy;” the sermon on “Our 
Saviour in the Temple,” with that entitled “ Jesus in the 
midst of the Doctors “ The Two Great Mysteries of 
Love,” with “ Christ the Bread of Life ; ” the Cardinal’s 
sermons (viii. and xi.), On the Passion, with Mr. 
Davies’s (xvi.) ; the sermon on the Kingdom of Christ, 
with those of Mr. Davies (ii., iii., iv.) on the same 
subject. Good as Cardinal Wiseman’s sermons are, Mr. 
Davies’s are, both in matter and style, immeasurably 
better. In them, also, w r e find the distinction between 
faith and reason; hut the tw r o are never separated, never 
opposed, as if contrary the one to the other. It is im¬ 
possible, indeed, minutely to examine either of the three 
volumes by Mr. Davies, Mr. Brown, and Mr. Maclaren. 
Each of them deserves a separate notice, and will repay 
a careful and devout perusal. They have their place, 
however, in this essay, as furnishing, by actual illustra¬ 
tion, such hints of the best modes of preaching, and the 
vocation of the preacher, as may surely be neither with¬ 
out interest nor without use. It is not the critic, but 
only good preachers, who can teach other people to 
preach ; it is too often the far more unpleasant and in¬ 
vidious office of the critic simply to indicate when the 
preacher’s work has been ill done; and he represents, 
in some manner, the law by which is the knowledge of 
sin , while he is wholly unable to impart that genius 
from whose operations all the laws and canons of 
criticism must be deduced. Even the critic himself can 
understand no author for whom he is utterly without 


136 


MODEL SERMONS. 


reverence, and lie is under immeasurably deeper obliga¬ 
tion to any work of genius than it can possibly be to him. 
The remarks, then, that follow must be regarded as an 
attempt to indicate what the best models have deter¬ 
mined to be the noblest forms and the true aim of 
preaching. Probably many tons’ weight of sermons are 
published every week and thickly scattered over the 
country, and a minute examination of a few hundred 
numbers of the various Penny Pulpits would scarcely fail 
to be very instructive. We should then understand 
better than we do now whence arise those dense fogs of 
ignorance in which unquestionably so many good people 
are miserably groping about. We should be introduced 
into the secret of the inaccurate and intolerant dogmatism 
which is at one moment so defiant, and at the next so 
panic-stricken, so ambitious and so grovelling, so super¬ 
stitious and so profane. We should understand how it 
is that religion is doing more to disturb the peace of 
English society than almost all other causes put together. 
We should learn how it comes to pass that so many 
hundreds, nay, thousands of people, are incapable of 
perceiving any kind of godliness apart from the continual 
use of conventional phrases ; or any foundation of piety, 
excepting a written book, which, for thousands of years 
after man was created, had no existence. It is quite un¬ 
necessary to deny that these sermons have done, or are 
doing, in their preached or printed shape, some sort 
of good ; but they are doing the good indirectly, and 
at the cost of enormous mischief. They are strengthen¬ 
ing men’s belief of one set of truths which, taken 
alone, are robbed of by far the largest portion of 
their significance and value; but they are strengthen¬ 
ing that belief too often at the cost of rendering men 


MODEL SERMONS. 


137 


utterly incapable of the noblest intellectual and spiritual 
achievements. They urge men to build their faith 
upon the foundation of the .Scriptures as an in¬ 
fallible and authoritative declaration of God’s will; but 
they seem to teach that it is unnecessary, and even un¬ 
lawful, to ask for any authority for accepting the 
Scriptures themselves. In order that men’s souls may 
be saved, they seem willing to sacrifice so much of man’s 
nature, and faculty, and development, that men have 
scarcely anything left worth saving. And if a critic be 
complained of, or even abused, for passing so unfavour¬ 
able, and what may seem so bitter, a judgment on that 
vast mass of teaching which is filling every week a larger 
and larger place in the periodical literature of England, 
he may fairly answer—“ It is not I who condemn this 
preaching; it is not I wdio refuse to admit that twaddle 
and ignorance, bad jokes, and coarse invective, and bully¬ 
ing intolerance, and worn-out platitudes, are necessary 
to the salvation of souls. I should not know what good 
sermons are unless I had heard or read them. It is not 
I who complain of bad sermons; it is the good sermons 
that complain of them. I can only compare the one 
with the other ; I can only say, these contain their own 
evidence of being what sermons should be ; and they, 
and not the critic, condemn all sermons that radically 
and essentially differ from themselves.” 

Therefore it is, that in the remarks that follow I shall 
in no way presume to treat the sermons of such preachers 
as Mr. Davies, Mr. Brown, and Mr. Maclaren, as if they 
were schoolboys’ exercises, and I the pedagogue com¬ 
petent to correct them. With the utmost respect and 
gratitude I am only too thankful to have such models 
before me for the guidance of my judgment. I may 


138 


MODEL SERMONS. 


remark, to begin with, the entire absence from all these 
sermons of that affectation of being something or other, 
one scarcely knows w'hat, which is indicated by the very 
constant use, by inferior preachers, of we, instead of /. 
No doubt this is generally an unmeaning habit or a silly 
conventionalism ; but the first man who rebelled against 
it must have had some good reason for departing from 
a custom which is deemed by many essential to the 
modesty of the pulpit. If a Roman Catholic were to say 
we in his sermons instead of I , he might be supposed to 
mean something of this sort—“ I am, to you who listen 
to me, not a weak, erring mortal like yourselves; I do 
not tell you what merely seems true to me, which you 
are at liberty to dispute and to deny; I stand before you 
as the representative of the Infallible Church, in which 
the Holy Ghost is dwelling evermore; it is not I speak¬ 
ing to you, but I tell you what seems good to the Holy 
Ghost and to the holy Catholic Church.” Such a use 
as this of ice, instead of I, would be, at least, intelligible. 
So again, when a preacher announces his text, and 
directs the attention of his congregation to what he be¬ 
lieves to be its meaning, there ought to be such com¬ 
munion of thought and reflection, preacher and hearers 
both at the same time earnestly seeking for truth, with 
the firm belief that truth is the common heritage of all 
mankind, that the plural, we, may often be required. 
But nobody can read those wondrous three-headed com¬ 
positions called sermons, which the Penny Pulpit dis¬ 
tributes by tons at a time over the whole country, without 
perceiving that the we is generally a silly affectation of 
clerical dignity. 

During that long and deepening darkness which began 
to be dissipated at the Reformation, preaching became 


MODEL SERMONS.- 


139 


more and more neglected. The sacraments of the 
Church were degraded into magical incantations. A few 
drops of water, a few crumbs of bread, a few smears of 
oil, were the potent instruments by which human spirits 
were regenerated, and nourished, and introduced into 
heavenly blessedness. Men had almost forgotten, when 
they came together into God’s house, whose house it 
was, and why they had come thither. The clergy, who 
had been in better days the leaders of human progress 
and the depositories of learning, began to find their 
learning useless; and that to guide reluctant and 
ignorant followers was a painful and profitless business. 
So by degrees priests and people acting and reacting on 
each other, both were alike enveloped in a deep gloom of 
ignorance and idleness, in which nothing good or 
beautiful could live. When, therefore, the English 
nation began to grow weary of a tyranny which could not 
even justify itself by a superior ability to govern ; when, 
in a wondrous awakening of intellectual life, they began 
to despise the teachers who had nothing to teach, and 
who tried to steal the key of knowledge from all who 
wished to learn ; it was discovered that mummery and 
magic had so entirely usurped the place of truth and life, 
that priests could he found by scores who did not even 
know the meaning of the words they were accustomed to 
mutter in their solemn religious ceremonies. All was 
jargon and confusion together; the blind leading the 
blind. And then, once for all, it was swiftly determined 
that this darkness and disgrace should come to an end. 
Men demanded to he taught, to know the meaning of 
■what they did. How could the authorized leaders respond 
to such a call ? How could they teach what they did 
not know ? So there arose a new race of instructors ; 


140 


MODEL SERMONS. 


and statesmen and preachers accomplished the Refor- 
mation. 

Again and again, since the Reformation, the Church 
has relapsed, not into Popery but formalism; preferring 
the letter that killeth to the spirit that giveth life. 
Sacred ceremonies have been emptied of their meaning, 
have become a dull profitless routine; and, again and 
again, preachers, like the old prophets, have risen up to 
call men back from the form to the substance, from 
baptism to regeneration, from the Eucharist to the 
living bread that came down from heaven—in order that 
having regained the thing signified, the signs might be 
no longer a curse to them, but become a blessing. And 
now, in our own day, when the area of knowledge has 
increased, so that almost every Englishman may find a 
place within it ; when the example of America—mighty 
for good, and scarcely less mighty for evil—has almost 
changed liberty into anarchy, and elevated the foolish 
many above the few wise ; when we seem almost entering 
upon that period of our history which is already written 
for us in the brilliance, the commerce, the refinement, 
the corruption, the liberty, the anarchy, the despotism, 
the ruin of the Athenian democracy; when the power of 
speech is becoming next to money the greatest power 
among us, and even money itself can be obtained almost 
as easily by impudent self-assertion and mendacious 
puffery as by hard and steady work :—in these days the 
preacher may have a power that no other age could have 
given him, and must wrestle with temptations to forget 
his true vocation and his real message that no other age 
could know. He will be tempted to be plausible rather 
than true, to seek for popularity instead of bearing the 
burden of the Lord, to have ever present to him the 


MODEL SERMONS. 


141 


consciousness that every well-liked sermon will gain 
votes in his favour, and that every ill-liked sermon will 
lose them. He will he sorely tempted to subject even 
truth and religion to the test of the ballot-box. 

Therefore, every faithful preacher must avail himself 
of every means, how simple soever they may seem, of 
impressing upon his hearers the fact that there are 
certain actual realities and unalterable laws to which al] 
mankind are subject, whatever they may choose or vote, 
He will, in effect, say to his hearers: “ You come tc 
God’s house, not to listen to me, but to worship your 
Father who is in heaven. The prayers we offer are 
common prayers—prayers for all of us, as members 
of the divine family. The lessons I read to you are 
taken from the Holy Scriptures. The sacraments are 
the signs of that divine life which there is for all of us 
in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ whom God has 
sent. During our worship, I shall try to explain to 
you some part of God’s Word, that the lessons of Scrip¬ 
ture may come to you not in word only but in power. 
But I have no infallible teaching for you—which is at 
once to settle all your doubts, and relieve you from the 
responsibility of thought and judgment. I cannot even 
pretend that, for what I say, I have the authority of the 
whole Church of God. You may be sure that I would 
not teach you what I do not believe to be true, but what 
I say to you you must receive with caution and with 
freedom ; and the best result that I can hope for from 
my teaching is this, that it may lead you to that ‘ true 
Light that lighteth every man that cometli into the 
world,’ to that Holy Ghost who has promised to ‘lead us 
all into the whole truth.’ ” 

Again, the sermons of Mr. Davies, and Mr. Brown, 


142 


MODEL SERMONS. 


and Mr. Maclaren are entirely free from all those oddities 
which not even the most brilliant wit can redeem from 
profanity. There are no sermons in these volumes from 
the text, ‘‘Who’s dat knocking at de door?”—the text 
selected by a popular minister in Manchester, wherewith 
to edify as many thousands of human beings as the Free 
Trade Hall in that city could hold. “French Plays,” says 
the author of The Sentimental Journey , “are absolutely 
fine; and whenever I have a more brilliant affair upon 
my hands than common, as they suit a preacher just as 
well as a hero, I generally make my sermon out of ’em, 
and for the text, ‘ Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia 
and Pamphylia,’ is as good as any one in the Bible.” 
This, indeed, seems to be the principle upon which a very 
large number of preachers have selected their texts ; 
and it is an old complaint against them, that they do 
not expound the Bible but play with it. There is a 
very amusing little book to be picked up occasionally at 
old book-stalls, “ The Ground and Occasions of the 
Contempt of the Clergy and Religion enquired into ; in 
a Letter written to R. L. London: printed by W. 
Godbid, for N. Brooke, at the Angel, in Cornhill, 1670.” 
The book is every way worth reading, and is attributed 
to a writer of considerable eminence. He gives many 
examples of the absurd, not to say profane use, that the 
preachers of his time used to make of the Holy Scrip¬ 
tures ; and, in fact, the book is as droll a little book as 
a book can be, with much more fun in it than Punch, and 
Fun, and The Owl, and The Porcupine all put together. 

“ For a short text,” lie says, “ that certainly was the greatest 
break that ever was, which was occasioned from those words of St. 
Luke, xxiii. 28 , ‘ Weep not for me, weep for yourselves.’ It is a 
plain case, Sir, here’s hut eight words; and the business was so 



MODEL SERMONS. 


143 


cunningly ordered, that there sprang out eight parts. ‘ Here 
are,’ says the Doctor, ‘ eight words, and eight parts. 1. Weep 
not; 2. But weep'; 3. Weep not, but weep; 4. Weep for me; 
5. For yourselves; 6. For me for yourselves; 7. Weep not for 
me; 8. But weep for yourselves.’ That is to say; north, north 
and by east, north north-east, north-east and by north, north-east, 
north-east and by east, east north-east, east and by north, east. 
Now it seems not very easie to determine, which has obliged the 
world most, he that found out the compass, or he that divided the 
forementioned text; but I suppose the cracks will go generally 
upon the Doctor’s side; by reason what he did was done by 
undoubted art, and absolute industry; but as for the other, the 
common report is, that it was found out by mere foolish fortune. 
Well, let it go how it will, questionless they will be both famous 
in their way, and honourably mentioned to posterity.” “ But it 
is high time, Sir,” he says, after giving many ludicrous examples 
of preposterous misuse of Scripture, to “ make an end of this 
preaching, lest you be as much tired with the repetition of it, as 
the people were little benefited when they heard it. I shall only 
remind you, Sir, of one thing more, and that is the ridiculous, 
senseless, and unintended use, which many of them make of 
concordances. I shall give you but one instance of it, although 
I could furnish you with an hundred printed ones. The text, 
Sir, is this, Gal. vi. 15, ‘ For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision 
nor uncircumcision availeth anything, but a new creature.’ Now 
all the world know the meaning of this to be, that let a man be of 
what nation he will, Jew or Gentile, if he amends his life and 
walks according to the Gospel, he shall be accepted with God. 
But this is not the way that pleases them. They must bring into 
the sermon, to no purpose at all, a vast heap of places of Scripture 
(which the concordance will furnish them with) where the word 
new is mentioned. And the new observation must be, that God 
is for new things; God is for a new creature, St. John, xix. 41; 
* Now in the place where he was crucified, there was a garden, 
and in the garden a new sepulchre, wherein was never man 
yet laid ; there laid they Jesus.’ And again, St. Mark, xvi. 17, 
Christ tells His disciples, they that are true believers shall cast 
out devils, and speak with new tongues; and likewise the prophet 
teaches us, Isaiah xlii. 10, ‘ Sing unto the Lord a new song, and 
his praise unto the end of the earth.’ Whence it is plain that 
Christ is not for old things; He is not for an old sepulchre ; He 


144 


MODEL SERMONS. 


is not for old tongues ; He is not for an old song; He is not for 
the old creature; Christ is for the new creature, circumcision and 
uncircumcision availeth nothing, hut the new creature. And 
what do we read concerning Samson, Judges xv. 15 ; is it not that 
he slew a thousand of the Philistines with one new jaw-bone? 
An old one might have killed its tens, its twenties, its hundreds; 
but it must be a new jaw-bone that is able to kill a thousand. 
God is for the new creature. 

“ But may not some say, Is God altogether for new things ? 
How comes it about, then, that the prophet says, Isaiah i. 13, 14; 

‘ Bring no more vain oblations, etc. Your new moons, and your 
appointed feasts, my soul liateth?’ And again, what means that, 
Deut. xxxii. 17—19; ‘They sacrificed unto devils, and to new 
gods, whom they knew not; to new gods that came newly up; 
and when the Lord saw it, he abhorred them ’ ? To which 
I answer, that God indeed is not for new moons, nor for new gods; 
but excepting moons and gods, He is for new things. God is for 
the new creature. 

“ It is possible, Sir, that somebody besides yourself may be so 
vain as to read this letter, and they may perhaps tell you, that 
there be no such silly and useless people as I have described ; 
and if there be, not above two or three in a county; or should 
there be more, it is no such complaining matter, seeing that the 
same happens in other professions, in law and physick ; in both 
which there be many a contemptible creature. Such, therefore, 
as these may be pleased to know, that if there had been need I 
could have told them either the book, and very page, almost of 
all that has been spoken about preaching, or else the when and 
where, and the person that preached it.” 

This last is a very judicious remark. If anybody chooses 
to offer an unfavourable criticism of either preaching or 
practices with which he is perfectly familiar; if he 
speaks out of the mere honesty of his soul, and his 
earnest desire that such evils as he may have noticed in 
word or deed maybe corrected; there is always some¬ 
body who knows nothing whatever about him, who is 
not one jot or tittle more honest or better informed than 
himself, who forthwith replies to all his suggestions and 



MODEL SERMONS. 


145 


expostulations that he is a malignant liar, a disappointed 
man, a man of soured and bitter temper. I will venture, 
nevertheless, to affirm that the Penny Pulpit, and much 
more, the pulpit that is not worth offering for sale 
at the price of one penny, would still furnish examples 
of grotesque absurdity as astonishing as those which are 
found in the little, book from which the above extracts 
were taken. No one will deny the cleverness, for 
instance, of the Kev. C. H. Spurgeon; everybody who 
knows him asserts that he is a witty, jovial man, 
thoroughly generous and unconventional, with a very 
becoming scorn of humbug, even though it should be 
mistaken for religion. And yet very few will deny that 
many of his earlier sermons were utterly indecent, and 
that his jokes and oddities could scarcely, by any well- 
regulated mind, be distinguished from profanity. The 
sermons, again, of the Kev. A. Mursell, of Manchester, 
may possibly have saved a few souls; but only at the 
enormous risk of turning the church into a theatre and 
the Gospel into a farce. It is really not desirable to 
admit Harlequin and Pantaloon, and Columbine and 
Clown, to holy orders; and is it, after all, the truth or 
the joke that fastens itself most securely on the thought 
and memory of the hearer? “ ‘ It is damned hot:’ 
these are the words that I heard as I was entering the 
sanctuary this morning. Let me assure you, my profane 
hearer, that you will find hell a great deal hotter!” 
After this fashion, it is reported, a popular London 
minister began his sermon one Sunday morning. This 
anecdote, probably, like almost all anecdotes, is a lie; 
but it is a symbolical lie,—a coarse, vulgar, exaggerated 
description of what is very often said in the sermons of 
“ Punch in the Pulpit.” Is it really necessary to adopt 


146 


MODEL SERMONS. 


this style of exhortation ? If it attracts attention, it 
is still necessary to enquire to what the attention is 
attracted. I have no hesitation in saying that the 
attention is attracted to the joke, and not to the religious 
truth introduced by it; and this pious buffoonery is a 
very ignorant insult to the working classes. A Sunday 
spent in the parks or on the London-fields would very 
soon convince anybody, who has ears to hear, that there 
are teachers busily at work among the working classes 
who are in grim earnest, and who consider all these 
pulpit witticisms beneath contempt. There are many 
divines who seem very little aware that their arguments 
have been long ago anticipated and answered, not to 
say demolished, by reasoners in fustian jackets, and 
often with deplorably dirty faces and linen,—Jews, 
Catholics, Atheists, Secularists, people of all beliefs and 
of no belief at all, who really do want to know what 
religious teachers mean, and how they can prove the 
propositions which they so confidently affirm. That 
public discussions should interrupt the worship of a 
Christian congregation is entirely insufferable, and would 
be an unmitigated evil; but no clergyman should ever 
permit himself to be entrenched within the safe enclosure 
of the “sacred desk,” without having first, in his own 
mind, most carefully discussed and opposed his own 
theories and propositions. It is impossible, as it would 
be unwise, for a preacher to exhibit in every discourse 
all the reasons that have combined to lead him to the 
conclusions at which he has arrived ; but he ought never 
to make a single assertion which he does not know that 
he is thoroughly prepared to verify. Jokes that w r aver 
between the Bible and the beer-shop are by no means 
the spiritual aliment which the intelligent poor are 



MODEL SERMONS. 


147 


willing to live upon. They cannot speak their mind in 
church or chapel ; but everybody who mixes with them 
where they can speak their mind understands that what 
they utterly loathe and despise is every sort of jargon, 
big words, mere pompous shibboleths, of which they do 
not know the meaning. The large congregations that 
crowd the tabernacles and halls of “Reverend” jesters 
are made up of a very large proportion of lazy people, 
who have a notion that the chief duty of a Christian 
man is to be tickled, or “fed,” or “ comforted,” or any¬ 
thing, in short, except working for the good of his 
fellow-creatures and the glory of God. If what people 
say about the providence of God be not hypocritical 
nonsense from beginning to end, we may surely believe 
that the providence of God puts a man in some particular 
district in order that, for some time at least, he should 
stop there. To put this matter in the coarsest form, he 
gets his living there. Suppose he is a shop-keeper in 
Bethnal-green : the locality is, undoubtedly, far from 
aristocratic; the parish authorities have the reputation 
of being, in matters of common humanity, somewhat 
below the level of half-naked savages. But still the 
Bethnal-green people are the customers who patronise 
his shop, and without whose patronage he could not live 
at all. Surely, if he is wiser than they are, he is, as 
St. Paul would say, “ their debtor.” Undoubtedly, a 
fight with the ignorance and brutality, the disease and 
poverty, of Bethnal-green is not a cheerful occupation, 
but manifestly that battle must be fought by somebody 
or other; and the man who is making his money out of 
Bethnal-green, and who leaves the cure of its evils and 
the multiplication of its comforts to perfect strangers, is 
a very mean and shabby person. If Bethnal-green is in 

l 2 


148 


MODEL SERMONS. 


want of churches and chapels, priests and preachers and 
schoolmasters, the people who are hound, in the sight 
of God, to furnish these things are the inhabitants of 
Bethnal-green itself, and especially those who are rich 
and prosperous. Any arrangement which should remove 
the rich and prosperous from all genuine human contact 
w T ith their more unfortunate and unsuccessful neighbours 
would be a very wicked and ungodly arrangement. 

And this leads me to notice a class of apologies, 
frequently offered, for some of the most ominous pulpit 
eccentricities which, during the last few years, have been 
thrusting themselves into prominence. A godly'man is 
astonished and appalled by the laziness and indifference 
and heartlessness of some Christian congregation ; there¬ 
upon, in a way, perhaps, justifiably irregular, he does 
his best to wake them out of that sleep which may so 
easily become death. Hymns, prayers, fiery exhortations, 
personal appeals, vehement gesticulations, “penitent 
forms,” all manner of revival appliances, are possibly, to 
begin with, not a worse evil than spiritual deadness. A 
great effect is produced; the sleeping congregation is 
roused into activity, and he who woke them out of their 
indifference and sloth becomes notorious as a revivalist. 
If there be any work at all, which I very much doubt, for 
a professional revivalist to do, it can surely be no other 
than this :—to awake those who too long and too heavily 
are sleeping; it can, surely, never be the work of any 
one who is not insane to irritate those who are awake 
already into an inflammatory and feverish excitement. 
A revivalist is, if we may so speak, a tonic, or a stimu¬ 
lant, or a counter-irritant; but most unquestionably he 
is not food and rest. His very existence implies disease. 
If he can cure his patients, so much the better ; and the 



MODEL SERMONS. 


149 


sooner lie can cure them the better. And then, with a 
joyous regret, let us courteously bid him good-bye, and 
treat him as we do apothecaries and medicine bottles. 
But this is far from the method that is often recom¬ 
mended by the religious world. Build, they say, for our 
revivalist a huge hall or tabernacle that shall hold 
thousands of human beings ; let no part of our spiritual 
person be ever free from the most irritating of blisters. 
Let us, in our most devout and reverent moods, when we 
are most conscious of doing our best to obey God and 
help one another, be appealed to as wretched sinners, 
slothful and unprofitable servants, and teased and 
worried, and warned and threatened, as if the grace of 
God had done nothing for us, and there were no such 
thing in the world as regeneration and holiness. The 
revivalist, we are told, will suit a certain class; let him 
have a huge edifice in which to preach, and let him have 
this certain class to preach to. To which I answer, it is 
in every respect undesirable, a total mistake, an unmiti¬ 
gated evil, that the different classes of religious people 
should be separated from one another. If all the zealous 
Christians in the world were to be put together, there 
would be a vast development of zeal without discretion, 
that would reduce all Christian order to chaos. If all * 
the discreet Christians in the world were put together, 
there would be so many examinations and re-examina¬ 
tions, resolutions and amendments, committees and sub¬ 
committees, reports and adjournments, and then, for 
safety’s sake, the whole long business done over again, 
that, in fact, nothing would ever be thoroughly done at 
all. Who would care to join a Church, every member 
of which was nothing but a clever logician ; or a Church 
of which every member was an impassioned enthusiast ? 


150 


MODEL SERMONS. 


The major premises of the logician must be gathered 
from actual experience and life. The emotions have as 
real and important a place in human nature as the in¬ 
tellect or conscience. The better part of valour is not 
always discretion, nor is mere rashness courage. Enthu¬ 
siastic people are benefited by the cautious, and the 
cautious by the eager—an arrangement by which 
Christian people could be classed together according to 
their prominent characteristics would simply produce 
monsters. 

The sermons in the volumes wdiose titles are at the 
head of this essay are a complete and most admirable 
protest against this tendency; which, in truth, is be¬ 
coming exceedingly dangerous among us. The sermons 
of Mr. Davies, for instance, would unquestionably give 
great pleasure to a congregation of intelligent, well- 
educated Christian people; but they are perfectly free 
from jargon, perfectly intelligible to every sensible 
Englishman, even if he had never been to school in his 
life ; and this is the sure proof, or one of the sure proofs, 
that they are not out of harmony with the Gospel of the 
common salvation. For the Gospel is not meant for 
poor people only, nor for rich people only, but for all 
• sorts and conditions of men ; it will humble the pride of 
the haughty, and teach the mean-spirited and despond¬ 
ing a noble self-respect. 

The sermons of Cardinal Wiseman are too much of 
the nature of a continual appeal to the feelings, and we 
are very often told that the preaching that has this for 
its object is the most effective of all preaching. I 
entirely disbelieve it. The emotions which are not the 
result of knowledge and thought are scarcely better than 
the wrigglings of a wounded worm. It is the inalienable 


MODEL .SEKMONS. 


151 


distinction of a human being that it is possible for him 
to know why he acts, speaks, or feels ; and a very large 
part of human education has for its chief object to enable 
us to control our emotions. 

We all owe our sincerest thanks to such preachers as 
teach us, not by cold critical descriptions hut by their 
own preaching, what the vocation of the preacher really 
is. Mr. Davies, Mr. Brown, and Mr. Maclaren expound 
Scripture instead of playing with it. They come to the 
Bible as learners, not as patrons. They condescend to 
no mean devices for entrapping the attention of reluctant 
hearers. They are quite sure that he who persuades 
them to pander to had taste and ignorance, to think more 
of popularity than truth, more of reputation and power 
than of the mysteries of God’s love, is not God, hut the 
evil spirit who offered to Jesus all the kingdoms of the 
world and all their glory—“ if thou wilt bow down and 
worship me.” 





ON RITUALISM .* 


Very few people will now deny that a great change, 
amounting almost to a revolution, has, during the last 
quarter of a century, been passing over the Established 
Church, I do not mean that the first symptoms, much 
less the causes of this revolution, are of no older date ; 
but at any rate for five and twenty years, the attention, 
first of the thinking few, and at last of the unthinking 
many, has been directed to this fact—that there is a 
large and increasing party in the Established Church, 
wishing and trying, and at last to a very dangerous 
extent succeeding in the attempt, to undo the Reforma¬ 
tion. The most conspicuous symptom of the existence 
and success of this party is to be found in an unmis- 
takeable alteration in the rites and ceremonies of the 
Church of England. Very young men can remember 
the time when it was almost dangerous for any clergy¬ 
man, outside a cathedral, to preach a sermon in a 
surplice. Now, there are very many churches, not only 
in large cities but even in quiet country parishes, in 
which an ordinary Protestant would find it impossible to 


* “ Tlie Journal of Sacred Literature,” April, 1807. 




154 


ON RITUALISM. 


determine from the services themselves, whether he had 
found his way into a Roman or an Anglican church. 
The Holy Roman tongue is indeed still forbidden, and 
an English clergyman is still compelled to make use of 
the English language in those Common Prayers which 
are meant for English men and women.* But a priest 
who is forbidden to make use of an unknown tongue in 
divine service, may so effectually render himself inarticu¬ 
late, that it becomes absolutely of no importance what¬ 
ever what language he may be speaking. In what are 
called “high” churches no stranger, no educated 
Englishman, who was not already perfectly familiar with 
the Book of Common Prayer, would be able so much as 
to guess what words the clergymen were using. 

Moreover these “high” churches are for the most 
part crowded with worshippers. Not only do idle young 
women, who may naturally enough he attracted by gay 
dresses, even though worn only by female men, waste 
their leisure in foolish superstitions; hut grown-up 
men, heads of families, and heads of houses of business, 
clerks in offices, lawyers, volunteers, all kinds of people, 
gather together in great crowds to take their part in the 
new idolatry which some three hundred years ago was 
cast away as obsolete. The Anglo-Catholics are not 
afraid even to direct special attention to the fact, that 
their converts are drawn almost equally from both sexes. 
Following apparently in this matter, as in many others, 
the Rubric of the first of the prayer-books of King 
Edward VI., they require communicants—and indeed 
the whole congregation is expected to “assist” at the 
Communion—“to tarry, the men on the one side, and 


# Tlie private prayers at the Anglican “ Mass ” are hi Latin. 



ON RITUALISM. 


155 


the women on the other side.” It must he confessed— 
and it is no mean praise—that these Anglo-Catholics 
have brought hundreds and thousands of young men 
and women to care for what they believe to be the 
worship of Almighty God, who but for them would 
probably have cared for nothing but flirtation and pipes. 
Altar cloths and vestments, incense and vases of flowers, 
are far enough from religion ; but they are at any rate 
less dangerous and less disgusting than slander or 
spittoons. 

The change, however, that has come over the English 
Church is of the very gravest importance—indeed, it is 
quite impossible to over-estimate its importance. It 
really amounts to something like this,—an affirmative 
reply to the question soberly asked, not in mockery but 
with the expectation of a sensible answer,—Is England 
to become like Spain ? Is the State to become subor¬ 
dinate to the Church ? Are priests to have more power 
over married women than their own husbands, and over 
children than their own parents ? Is healthy British 
morality to be changed for the casuistry of the Confes¬ 
sional ? Is that liberty “to know, to utter, and to 
argue freely,” which has for something like three 
centuries been the foundation of everything great in 
England, to be thrown away; and instead of it are we 
to take time and eternity, hell and heaven, devil and 
God, just as the priest thinks fit to give them to us ? 

It surely must be worth while to enquire into the 
causes of this great revolution, this return to the 
beggarly elements, the Christianized paganism of the 
unreformed Church of England. It is obvious enough, 
of course, that there is a certain class of people—not 
very numerous, and on the other hand very frivolous— 


156 


ON RITUALISM. 


who prefer ceremonies for their own sake. They care 
nothing about symbolism, because they rest in the sign 
and never go beyond it. There are young curates, fresh 
from the mystic fingers of the ordaining bishop, who 
would find some unaccountable enjoyment in dressing 
themselves up in all the ecclesiastical finery, and 
“celebrating” the Eucharist even in their own bed¬ 
rooms. The education of the clergy in this country can 
scarcely fail to make them either heretics or “women ” 
—old women or young women, as the case may he. 
Vicars and rectors, when they are not actively or 
passively heretics, are old women; and many “ Catholic” 
curates are young women. They think just as much as 
any other silly girls do, about a sweet thing in satins or 
lace ; and male girls dress up for mass, just as female 
girls dress up for a hall. The chancel of a large church 
is often much more spacious, considering the perform¬ 
ances that are necessary, than the stage of a small 
theatre; and priests and deacons, epistolers and gospel- 
ers, surpliced men and hoys, banners and crosses, and 
flowers, and the half-transparent mist of fragrant incense 
—all these may be grouped together so artistically that 
they may almost rival the transformation scene at a 
pantomime. Very many, even in the Puritan sects, 
prefer a gown because “ it looks nice,” and in like 
manner a certain portion of our modern Ritualists—-just 
big enough and heavy enough to increase the momentum 
of the whole moving mass—are Ritualists, because the 
vestments merely, and the decorations, and the incense, 
and the whole affair are uncommonly pretty. 

Of course these frivolous empty-headed nobodies are 
of exceedingly small importance. They are the genuine 
causes of no true movement, and they never can he 



ON RITUALISM. 


157 


depended upon. They are the soil of people of whom 
it would scarcely be using too bold a metaphor to say, 
that they never can be saved excepting by being damned. 
Their religion is relatively if not absolutely worse than 
their irreligion. They are just as insincere at church 
as they are in a drawing-room; only in a church they 
are mocking God, and in a drawing-room they are only 
mocking Mrs. Grundy. They never will know what 
they are until they are stripped stark naked of every 
pious conventionalism, and brought face to face with the 
roughest realities of common conscience. The vagaries 
of these people may happen to strengthen for a while 
any cause whatever—like the votes of Irish Americans 
—but thev are the true citizens of no state. 

*j 

There is, however, another cause of that revolution in 
the English Church which is now attracting so much 
attention, which though unquestionably of far more 
importance than the love of finery, ecclesiastical or 
otherwise, is nevertheless rather negative than positive. 
I mean the fact that a large proportion, if not a majority 
of the. clergy, have no special claim whatever upon the 
respect of the laity, excepting their official claim. In 
other words, they obtain the special respect they receive 
as clergymen, but not as men. They are not immoral, 
for it may quite safely be taken for granted that in this 
respect a clergyman is above suspicion. Doubtless 
many clergymen still hunt, and so far may be called 
“ hunting parsons; ” but the extreme puritanism that 
can object to a hunt is nearly dead, and Christianity is 
j)erliaps none the "worse for being muscular. Even 
among Dissenters, what used to be called worldliness is 
now judged as St. Paul would have us judge all such 
matters; and so long as a man has a clear conscience 


158 


ON RITUALISM. 


and a good intention—“ let every man be fully persuaded 
in his own mind.” 

I am very far from meaning that the clergy are 
regarded with a positive disrespect. When they are 
gentlemen, and have had a good university education, 
and can hold their own in any society in which they may 
happen to be placed, they are no doubt respected, but 
they are respected as gentlemen and not merely as 
clergymen. So far as the duties of a clergyman consist 
in reading prayers, the great wonder is that so very few 
can be found capable of discharging them. It is quite 
as easy to read the Liturgy as to read The Times news¬ 
paper; and any decently educated charity boy can do 
that. But what I mean by saying that the majority of 
the clergy have no claim to respect except their official 
claim, is this; as ordinary, unpretending gentlemen 
among gentlemen they would no doubt be more than 
tolerated, but by virtue of their position as clergymen 
they are expected to be the leaders and guides not of the 
most ignorant and worst educated of a parish, but of the 
least ignorant and best educated. They are to be able 
ex officio, to answer any questions, to solve difficulties, 
to give advice, and generally speaking to tell other people 
what to believe and what to do, or at any rate what not 
to believe and what not to do. Is the average curate as 
a mere man—as the Rev. Verdant Green for instance— 
in the least degree able to do this? It is perfectly 
notorious that there are many, not only undergraduates 
but ordained priests, who know absolutely nothing about 
those great questions which are rapidly becoming the 
questions for all earnest educated Englishmen. They 
are, therefore, to be judged, not according to what they 
are, but according to what their office imputes to them. 



ON RITUALISM. 


159 


There always has been, and until “we all come into 
the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son 
of God ” there always will he, a sort of rivalry between 
the prophet and the priest. The work of the prophet is 
upon men, and the work of the priest is upon God. 
Certain ceremonies have been regarded as necessary to 
salvation, and those ceremonies the priest only could 
perform. No doubt the ceremonies were supposed to 
have a meaning; hut the rites themselves were con¬ 
sidered essential, whether they had a meaning or not. 
It has, in fact, very frequently been considered an ad¬ 
vantage that the meaning should be concealed, regarded 
as a divine mystery, and protected from profanation by 
solemn secrecy. No doubt when religion has been more 
than mischievous superstition, whenever it has made 
any appeal to the intellect or conscience of men, the 
work of the priest has been greatly modified. He has 
been compelled more or less to explain and justify his 
ow T n position as interposing between God and man. If 
he could not show the intrinsic worth of those services, 
which it was his business to perform, he was, at any 
rate, forced to appeal to some divine authority, some 
distinct command from heaven, requiring them and 
appointing him. Even then a merely external religion 
is so exceedingly mischievous, so sure to demoralize 
mankind, and to he made the occasion of all sorts of 
tyranny, that no thinking man will ever believe in the 
existence of a divine authority for a set of meaningless 
or unexplained ceremonies. Hence, even among the 
Jews, whose ritual was regarded as the special gift of 
God, the priests were in almost every great crisis of the 
nation’s history on the wrong side. They were always 
ready to sanctify by their mystic ceremonies almost 


160 


ON RITUALISM. 


every form of evil. Moreover, tlieir whole life being 
devoted to the performance of rites which in themselves 
were mere mummery, they were always ready to multiply 
ceremonies, and to introduce into the national religion 
whatever foreign ritual might be so gorgeous and so 
complicated as to enhance their own importance. 

The one safeguard of the Jewish people, that which 
preserved their very religion from becoming an abomi¬ 
nation and a curse, was the wisdom and fidelity of the 
prophets. These men also had a divine call; and they 
spoke with authority and power, because they believed 
that they were uttering the very truth of God. Their 
great nobleness and inestimable value are almost con¬ 
cealed from us, because we have too often fixed our 
attention exclusively upon the smallest part of their 
teaching and work—their prediction of the events of a 
distant future. That God is able to bestow upon any 
man a miraculous foresight will scarcely be denied by 
any one who believes that God is a Person, a free living 
Being; but as a matter of interpretation and Biblical 
criticism, it may safely be affirmed that the amount of 
prediction—the foretelling in detail of future events—is 
in the Old Testament extremely small. At any rate, the 
prophets lived and worked for their oxen present, not 
chiefly for ours ; it was their insight, far more than 
their foresight, which made them what they were. 
They were the reformers both of their Church and 
State, rebuking at once the tyranny of the kings and the 
godlessness of the priests. Apart from the symbolism 
of the Jewish ritual, whenever its meaning was hidden 
or denied, the ritual itself was a mockery ; it w T as not 
only what God did not require, but it stood in the way 
of what God did require. Both negatively and positively 



ON RITUALISM. 


161 


it was a curse. At the best the sacrifices of the old law 
were always bordering on fatal delusion, were always in 
danger of actually inverting the truth concerning God. 
Nothing was easier than to regard them as the cause, 
instead of the effect, of the divine charity; as the sub¬ 
stitutes, rather than the signs, of the true repentance 
and responsive love of God’s people. To the prophets, 
therefore, the ritual itself, notwithstanding its divine 
origin, was an object of suspicion ; it was like the brazen 
serpent, luring men to a most dangerous, because a most 
subtile, idolatry. We hesitate to set up in the temple 
of Jehovah an image that our own hands have made ; 
but we quite easily persuade ourselves that we may 
laudably worship what God Himself gave us to use. 

Hence the burning words of the prophets are directed 
against the ritual itself, and not only against the abuses 
of ritual. Abuses are very often incurable, such as 
never can be removed. They penetrate the very sub¬ 
stance of an institution, till they actually take the place 
of the institution, displacing it as a heavier gas displaces 
a lighter; and their separate existence is no longer a 
present fact, but a curious revelation of obscure history. 

It is doubtful whether any part whatever of the original 
“Communion” was to be found in the Sacrifice of the 
Mass at the time of the Reformation; and often the 
Jewish prophets perceived that the ancient sacrifices 
were actually denying what they had been appointed to 
affirm. 

Thus one of the psalmists, speaking in the name of 
the Lord, refuses, and almost forbids , the sacrifices • 
which God himself had required. “ Hear, 0 my 
people, and I will speak; 0 Israel, and I will testify 
against thee: I am God, even thy God. I will not 

M 


162 


ON RITUALISM. 


reprove tliee for thy sacrifices or thy burnt-offerings, to 
have been continually before me. I will take no bullock 
out of thy house, nor he goats out of thy folds. For 
every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a 
thousand hills. I know all the fowls of the mountains : 
and the wild beasts of the field are mine. If I were 
hungry, I would not tell thee: for the world is mine, 
and the fulness thereof. Will I eat the flesh of bulls, 
or drink the blood of goats ? Offer unto God thanks¬ 
giving ; and pay thy vows unto the most High : And 
call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver 
thee, and thou shalt glorify me. . . . Whoso offereth 
praise glorifieth me: and to him that ordereth his 
conversation aright will I shew the salvation of God.” 
(Ps. 1. 7—15, 23.) 

Isaiah is even more hold. “ Hear the word of the 
Lord, ye rulers of Sodom; give ear unto the law of our 
God, ye people of Gomorrah. To what purpose is the 
multitude of your sacrifices unto me ? saith the Lord: 
I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of 
fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, 
or of lambs, or of he goats. When ye come to appear 
before me, who hath required this at your hand, to tread 
my courts ? Bring no more vain oblations ; incense is 
an abomination unto me ; the new moons and sabbaths, 
the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is 
iniquity, even the solemn meeting. Your new moons 
and your appointed feasts my soul liateth: they are a 
trouble unto me ; I am weary to hear them. And when 
* ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from 
you : yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: 
your hands are full of blood.” (Isaiah i. 10—15.) 

In a great calamity it is not sacrifices to which Joel 


ON RITUALISM. 


163 


calls the people, but true repentance and simple trust 
in the boundless mercy of God; while Micah gives a 
solemn warning that the costliest offerings, without 
goodness, are nothing worth. “ Wherewith shall I 
come before the Lord, and bow r myself before the high 
God ? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, 
with calves of a year old ? Will the Lord he pleased 
with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers 
of oil ? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, 
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul ? He hath 
shewed thee, 0 man, what is good; and what doth the 
Lord require of thee, hut to do justly, and to love mercy, 
and to walk humbly with thy God ?” (Micah vi. 6—8.) 

It is a peculiar benefit of the Christian religion, its 
special security against corruption, that it has no priest¬ 
hood, and no sacrifice. It is founded upon the fact that 
a perfect revelation of God has been, once for all, given 
to men in the Incarnate Son ; and that a perfect sacri¬ 
fice has been, once for all, in the Incarnate Son, offered 
to God. The need of propitiating God is, therefore, for 
ever at an end ; and the occupation of the priest is gone. 
What propitiation there is in Christ is, doubtless, much 
disputed; and even His sacrifice has, over and over 
again, been paganized. But, at any rate, “it is 
finished .” Whatever God wanted Christ gave; what¬ 
ever man wants Christ lives to bestow. What remains, 
therefore, to Christianity is the prophet —the teacher— 
to expound the meaning of the old signs, to bring out of 
the treasury of the Lord things new and old. No longer 
even Moses with face veiled; but “we all, with open 
face, beholding, as in a glass, the glory of the Lord, are 
changed into the same image.” 

Unhappily, in returning to Judaism—or rather to 

m 2 


164 


ON RITUALISM. 


heathenism itself—Christianity has made the most fatal 
of all mistakes. It has not only restored the priest, but 
it has united priesthood and prophecy in the same office. 
But for the separation, not to say opposition, of these 
two, Judaism, notwithstanding its divine origin, would 
have become a debasing superstition ; and Christianity 
has become a debasing superstition, through centuries of 
time, and among hundreds of millions of people, by 
means of their union. For when the two are united the 
priest will always overmaster the prophet. How can it 
possibly he otherwise ? The prophetic office needs 
courage, insight, effort—it has oftener been rewarded 
with sorrow than with worldly honour—its crown, for 
the most part, like the Master’s, a crown of thorns. 
The priest’s office needs absolutely nothing but human 
nature, and can he content with very corrupt human 
nature too. It needs explain nothing; it can dispense 
with all wisdom and insight. And when its only cor¬ 
rective is itself, the hope of amendment is obviously at 
its minimum. Moreover principles which, at the best, 
can only be applied to bare ceremonies, become applied 
to teaching and exposition. The priest tells us to do 
something, without any reason why ; and the priest- 
prophet tells us that it is right, and wise, and reasonable, 
and necessary to do something —because it is. 

Now dumb prophets will always be sorely tempted to 
become prophet-priests. A genuine prophet has God’s 
mark upon him. “Is not the Lord’s word like a fire, 
and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces ?” A 
mere priest may have man’s mark upon him—a shaven 
crown, for instance, or a long coat—but he might as well 
be appointed by lot, or by tossing a penny, as by the 
hands of a bishop. The majority of the English clergy 


ON RITUALISM. 


165 


are most unmistakeably not prophets; they cannot 
teach ; therefore they become prophet-priests. That is 
what I mean by saying that some of them take to 
“ ritualism,” because the only superiority they can pre¬ 
tend to possess is a merely official superiority. They are 
esteemed in their high place only as clergymen, not as 
men ; they have no personal superiority.* 

And yet it must be acknowledged that the Book of 
Common Prayer itself is most imperfectly reformed. 
There are some grand phrases in the Prayer Book that 
might easily enough lead a young man, newly ordained, 
to imagine himself invested with superhuman powers. 
Scarcely anything can be more misleading than the 
‘‘Form and Manner of Ordering of Priests.” When the 
bishop says, “ Receive the Holy Ghost for the office and 
work of a priest in the Church of God now committed 
unto thee by the imposition of our hands. Whose sins 
thou dost forgive, they are forgiven; and whose sins 
thou dost retain, they are retained”—it is not unnatural 
that the newly-ordained priest should imagine himself 
the recipient of mystic powers which raise him far above 
the level of ordinary Christians. He will find this view 
of what has been done to him strengthened by the fact, 
that he will now be permitted to perform those solemn 
services which had been forbidden him even as a deacon. 
He will be permitted to consecrate the bread and wine for 
the Holy Communion, and to pronounce the absolution 
of the penitent. And perhaps the reverence with which 


* If anybody doubts the fact of the inefficiency as teachers, 
preachers, prophets, of the Anglican clergy, let him read the 
reports of Church Congresses, etc., or such books as Mr. Gee’s 
Our Sermons , or the advertisements of MS. sermons for sale. 




166 


ON RITUALISM. 


a newly-ordained minister will regard his own priest¬ 
hood may often he considered as a sign of that devout 
earnestness which, for the work of the ministry, can 
surely never be in excess. 

Indeed, no one will deny that public service, espe¬ 
cially in small country churches, was often performed 
with the most disreputable slovenliness; and that the 
revival of Ritualism has done very much to lessen, if not 
to remove, this scandal. It must, however, not he for¬ 
gotten that this is not the direct, hut only an indirect 
effect of recent innovations. “While,” says the Bishop 
of St. David’s,* “ I would readily admit that which is 
often urged in defence of the Ritualistic movement, that 
in many of our churches there is large room for im¬ 
provement in the prevailing practice of our public wor¬ 
ship, I cannot find in this fact anything to justify, or 
indeed to account for, the recent innovations. In the 
first place, the resources of the Prayer Book were very 
far from exhausted. Experience, as far as it went, 
tended to show that a closer observance of its directions, 
and a fuller use of the means it places at our disposal, 
without the smallest excess over that which is perfectly 
legitimate and unquestionably authorized, would com¬ 
monly suffice to relieve our services from that monotony 
which has been the subject of complaint ... . As to 
ourselves .... choral associations have been lately 
formed in three of our archdeaconries, whose example 
will no doubt ere long be followed by the fourth. We 
have thus ground to hope that the voice of melody will 
be more frequently heard in our churches to inspirit the 
strains of praise and thanksgiving, and that the ‘ psalms 


* Charge, at his ninth visitation, October, 1866, page 86. 



ON RITUALISM. 


167 


and hymns and spiritual songs/ which were meant to he 
the expression of pious feelings, will not always be made 
to serve merely as additional lessons.” 

Thus far then in the mere improvement of the mode 
of conducting public service, the reforming clergy might 
have been content to learn a lesson even from the Non¬ 
conformists. What was needed to make the public 
worship in a parish church reverent and inspiriting, 
was godly earnestness and common sense. If the zeal 
of Primitive Methodists was sometimes wanting in dis¬ 
cretion, if their earnestness was often noisy and dis¬ 
orderly, the Prayer Book itself was certain to counteract 
the extravagances of holy fervour. But even the most 
riotous sincerity of earnest Christian men is perhaps 
more like genuine worship than the outward posture 
and most probably the inward frame “ of persons lis¬ 
tening, respectfully or otherwise, to some devotional 
utterances wdiich pass between the minister and the 
clerk .” 515 

But the unmistakeable object of recent innovations 
was to restore not a more profitable , but a more catholic 
usage. The ordinary services in what are called the 
“high” churches are, to many people, even as a matter 
of taste, exceedingly unpleasant. The Gregorian chants 
are, to most ears, insufferably dreary ; and the miserable 
sing-song in which the priests intone the prayers is, to 
most ordinary worshippers, quite apart from doctrinal 
considerations, excessively disagreeable. Probably no 
human being in his senses sings his prayers at his own 
bedside; and apart from some acoustic necessity the 
singing of prayers in the church seems on the face of it 


# Bishop of St. David’s Charge, p. 85. 



168 


ON RITUALISM. 


ridiculous. But the object of the Ritualists seems to he 
to separate everything sacerdotal from common life; and 
to return almost to that superstition in which words are 
not to be used as conveying a meaning, but muttered, 
half articulately, as magic incantations. 

The Ritualist movement is, again, so obviously a 
reaction against “scepticism” that even the “evan¬ 
gelical” clergy, though unquestionably Protestant, are 
sorely perplexed how to deal with that large body who, 
whatever else they may he, are uncompromising oppo¬ 
nents of every form of “rationalism.” It is this feeling 
that keeps men like the Bishop of Gloucester oscillating 
with hopeless indecision between opposing dangers; 
forgetting, meanwhile, that in the present state of. the 
Church indecision may he even worse than error—can 
indeed scarcely fail to be error on both sides. 

It is becoming more and more obvious that w r e are 
drawing near to that issue which, to most thoughtful 
persons, has long seemed the only issue—Is our religion 
to be founded on, or at any rate to be arrived at, by 
reason or by authority ? For a long time Churchmen 
have been halting between two opinions ; and the result 
was the sort of nescience which Dr. Newman has visited 
with withering scorn. Even while still in the Anglican 
Church, hating “liberalism” as he hated the very devil, 
he reserved his loathing and contempt for the mass of 
empty verbiage or suicidal contradictions which, for the 
majority of the members of the Established Church, took 
the place of orthodoxy. “In the present day, I said,* 
mistiness is the mother of wisdom. A man who can set 
down half a dozen general propositions, which escape 


# Apologia , pp. 193, 194. 



ON RITUALISM. 


169 


from destroying one another only by being diluted into 
truisms ; who can bold tlie balance between opposites so 
skilfully as to do without fulcrum or beam ; who never 
enunciates a truth without guarding himself against 
being supposed to exclude the contradictory; who bolds 
that Scripture is the only authority, yet that the Church 
is to be deferred to; that faith only justifies, yet that 
it does not justify without works ; that grace does not 
depend on the sacraments, yet is not given without 
them; that bishops are a divine ordinance, yet those 
who have them not are in the same religious condition 
as those who have;—this is your safe man, and the hope 
of the Church;—this is what the Church is said to want, 
not party men, but sensible, temperate, sober, well- 
judging persons, to guide it through the channel of 
no-meaning, between the Scylla and Charybdis of Aye 
and No. 

“ This state of things, however, I said could not last, 
if men were to read and think. They will not keep 
standing in that very attitude which you call sound 
Church of Englandism or orthodox Protestantism. 
They cannot go on for ever standing on one leg, or 
sitting without a chair, or walking with their feet tied, 
or grazing like Tityrus’s stags in the air. They will 
take one view or another, but it will be a consistent view. 
It may be Liberalism, or Erastianism, or Popery, or 
Catholicity; but it will be real.” 

So again,* “As to Liberalism, we think the for¬ 
mularies of the Church will ever, with the aid of a good 
Providence, keep it from making any serious inroads 
upon the clergy. Besides, it is too cold a principle to 


* Apologia , p. 192. 




170 


ON RITUALISM. 


prevail with the multitude. But as regarded what was 
called Evangelical Religion or Puritanism, there was 
more to cause alarm. I observed upon its organization; 
but, on the other hand, it had no intellectual basis, no 
internal idea, no principle of unity, no theology. ‘ Its 
adherents,’ I said, * are already separating from each 
other; they will melt away like a snow-drift. It has 
no straightforward view on any one point on which it 
professes to teach ; and to hide its poverty it has dressed 
itself out in a maze of words. We have no dread of it 
at all; we only fear what it may lead to. It does not 
stand on intrenched ground, or make any pretence to a 
^position ; it does but occupy the space between contend¬ 
ing powers—Catholic Truth and Rationalism. Then, 
indeed, will be the stern encounter, when two real and 
living principles, simple, entire, and consistent—one in 
the Church, the other out of it—at length rush upon 
each other, contending not for names and words, or half¬ 
views, hut for elementary notions and distinctive moral 
characters.’ ” 

The Ritualist party in the English Church have not 
yet come to see, what Dr. Newman discovered long ago, 
that their position is almost as inconsistent, and there¬ 
fore as unsafe, as -that of the Evangelicals themselves. 
Indeed the Evangelicals have a very considerable ad¬ 
vantage over the Ritualists in this circumstance, that 
their inconsistencies are not fatal to evangelical doctrine, 
whereas even the very slightest inconsistency is instantly 
and completely fatal to the Anglo-Catholic system. No 
doubt the Evangelicals have a theory—though none of 
them can tell us what it is—of inspiration ; and, at any 
rate, derive, or believe that they derive, every article of 
their faith from Holy Scripture. But so long as they 


ON RITUALISM. 


171 


can keep tlieir doctrines, they are perfectly willing, for 
strategical purposes, to reserve or hold in abeyance the 
consideration of the authority upon which they are 
founded. Besides which, they may he very formidable 
opponents, even if they have no principles whatever of 
any sort. A man may surely pull down a wall without 
being an architect, or even so much as a common brick¬ 
layer. And when any party in the Church, or any party 
out of the Church, ask the Ritualists for the authority of 
their new book of Leviticus, they have no answer what¬ 
ever to give. The liturgy of the so-called Irvingites is 
in many respects far nearer to the ancient English use, 
and to the Prayer Book of 1549, than the Book of 
Common Prayer itself; it has in its Eucharistic office 
a distinct commemoration of the Virgin and saints and 
all the faithful departed, a very conspicuous doctrine of 
real presence, and a prayer invoking the descent of the 
Holy Ghost upon the bread and wine, in order that they 
may become the body and blood of Jesus Christ. More¬ 
over, these so-called Irvingites are as careful as the 
Anglo-Catholics themselves about symbolical colours 
and vestments -and the observance of the canonical 
hours. But none of these Anglican priests'would admit 
for a moment that the “Irvingites” have authority for 
their usages. The Ritualists refer, indeed, to canons 
and rubrics of the ^reformed Church; but who gives 
them the power to take what they like, and leave what 
they do not like ? In plain English, however much, or 
however little, the Church of England differs from the 
Church of Rome, the ivhole of the difference is based 
upon Rationalism. 

Nevertheless, the Ritualists do not see this, and are 
therefore protesting for the principle of authority; and 


172 


ON RITUALISM. 


the Evangelicals do not see it, and are themselves still 
hostile to Rationalism. The crisis has not quite come 
yet, but it is getting near. The battle between authority 
and reason must he fought out; and those who try, 
during that conflict, to walk along the via media, will he 
cut to pieces by the shot of both the opposing hosts. 
But it is a mean return that the Anglo-Catholics make 
to the Evangelicals. If it had not been for them the 
Tractarians would long ago have been destroyed. 

The great cause of the Ritualist innovations is the 
change in the doctrines of the clergy of the Established 
Church. These doctrines, of which rites and ceremonies 
are merely the expressions and symbols, may or may 
not have been in the Prayer Book and Homilies for 
three hundred years; hut they certainly were not in the 
sermons or beliefs of English Establishment clergymen 
before the late revival. The dogma of apostolical 
succession, of the dignity of the priesthood, and of the 
real presence of the body and blood of Christ in the 
Holy Communion, had become so completely unrealized, 
that when they were restored they were regarded as 
sheer novelties. All these dogmas, jointly and severally, 
are involved in the Ritualist revival. I will consider 
first and chiefly the last—the dogma of the real presence. 

Any doctrine whatever of the real presence of Christ 
in the consecrated bread and wine confounds a person 
with a thing, spirit with not-spirit. The attributes of a 
living spirit and of baked flour are mutually exclusive, 
and no mummeries or incantations can combine them. 
The chemical character and nutritive properties, the 
weight, the smell, the colour of baked flour, may indeed 
be referred to the supreme Will—and so may everything 
else. But even as an expression of the divine will a bit 


ON RITUALISM. 


173 


of bread can reveal God only within the limits of its own 
expressiveness. If the whole divinity, the complete God, 
is in a bit of bread, then it could scarcely be doubted 
that the complete God is infinitely inferior to the meanest 
living man. At the time of the Reformation it is not 
wonderful that the only true and rational doctrine of the 
Eucharist was rejected ; because that Reformation was 
only the beginning of the end, and was determined as 
much by expediency as by principle, by the wrath of men 
as by the righteousness of God. But the Anglican 
doctrine of the Sacraments has every evil of the Trident¬ 
ine doctrine, and none of its consistency. 

Not, indeed, that much of what is to be found in the 
Anglican formularies can be compelled to give evidence 
in favour of the Ritualists by any process short of 
torture. At the back of the title-page of the Directovium 
Anglicanum we read: “Let this sacrament be in such 
wise done and ministered ... as the good fathers in the 
primitive Church frequented it.” ( Homil ., b. ii.) Now 
this advice is by no means unsound, because the primitive 
Church is very far from being the mediaeval Church. 
There is a kind of critical simplicity about the Ritualists 
that can scarcely be distinguished from guile. They are, 
or affect to be, ignorant of the fact that ecclesiastical 
literature swarms with forgeries; and that there is no 
more reason to suppose that any one of the apostles 
composed a liturgy than that Julius Caesar composed 
Macaulay’s History of England. When they talk about 
the “ Liturgy of St. James,” they are simply talking 
nonsense ; and it is very difficult to believe that they 
are not perfectly aware that they are talking nonsense. 
But, at any rate, it is quite certain that they know per¬ 
fectly well what is to be found in the Homilies; and to 


174 


ON RITUALISM. 


put the extract that I have just quoted at the head of the 
Directorium Anglicanum is, to say the least, most culpably 
unfair. Even the omitted portion of the one sentence 
is fatal to the use which is made of the quotation. 
“ But before all other things, this we must he sure of 
especially, that this supper be in such wise done and 
ministered as our Lord and Saviour did and commanded 
to be done, as His holy apostles used it, and the good 
fathers in the primitive Church frequented it.” * There 
are many things doubtful in the world, and few things 
certain; but among those few things, unquestionably this 
is one—that the supper that Jesus Christ and the apostles 
frequented was in no such wise done and ministered as 
the Directorium Anglicanum requires. But the unfair¬ 
ness and irrelevance of the garbled quotation to which I 
am referring is still more apparent when we consider the 
rest of what this homily contains. “ Our loving Saviour 
hath ordained and established the remembrance of His 
great mercy expressed in His passion in the institution 
of His heavenly supper, where every one of us must be 
guests, and not gazers ; eaters, and not lookers ; feeding 
ourselves, and not hiring others to feed for us; that we 
may live by our own meat, and not perish for hunger, 
while others devour all.” f “ Neither can he he devout 
that otherwise doth presume than it was given by the 
author. We must, then, take heed, lest of the memory 
it be made a sacrifice; lest of a communion it he made 
a private eating; lest of two parts we have hut one ; 
lest, applying it for the dead, we lose the fruit that he 
alive.” 1 “ Ought not we, then, by the monition of the 


# Homilies , (Oxford, 1840), p. 39G. 

t Ibid., p. 396. 


f Ibid., p. 396. 





ON RITUALISM. 


175 


wise man, by tlie wisdom of God, by the fearful example 
of tbe Corinthians, to take advised heed that we thrust 
not ourselves to this table with rude and unreverent 
ignorance, the smart whereof Christ's church hath rued 
and lamented these many days and years ? For what 
hath been the cause of the ruin of God’s religion but the 
ignorance hereof? What hath been the cause of this 
gross idolatry but the ignorance hereof? What hath 
been the cause of this mummish massing but the 
ignorance hereof? Yea, what hath been, and what is at 
this day, the cause of this want of love and charity but 
the ignorance hereof? Let us, therefore, so travail to 
understand the Lord’s Supper that we be no cause of the 
decay of God’s worship, of no idolatry, of no dumb 
massing, of no hate and malice; so that we may the 
boldlier have access thither to our comfort.” * “ Now it 

followeth to have with this knowledge a sure and constant 
faith, not only that the death of Christ is available for 
the redemption of all the world, for the remission of 
sins, and reconciliation with God the Father; but also 
that He hath made upon His cross a full and sufficient 
sacrifice for thee, a perfect cleansing of thy sins, so 
that thou acknowledgest no other Saviour, Redeemer, 
Mediator, Advocate, Intercessor, but Christ only; and 
that thou mayest say with the apostle, that He loved 
thee, and gave Himself for thee. For this is to stick 
fast to Christ’s promise made in His institution, to 
make Christ thine own, and to apply His merits unto 
thyself. Herein thou needest no other man's help, no 
other sacrifice or oblation, no sacrificing priest, no mass, 
no means established by man’s invention.” f “And 


* Homilies, pp. 397, 398. 


f Ibid., p. 399. 




176 


ON RITUALISM. 


truly as tlie bodily meat cannot feed the outward man, 
unless it he let into a stomach and digested which is 
healthful and sound, no more can the inward man he 
fed, except his meat he received into his soul and heart, 
sound and whole in faith. Therefore, said Cyprian, 
when we do these things, we need not to whet our teeth, 
but with sincere faith w r e break and divide that whole 
bread. It is well known that the meat we seek for in 
this supper is spiritual food, the nourishment of our 
soul, a heavenly refection, and not earthly ; an invisible 
meat, and not bodily; a ghostly substance, and not 
carnal; so that to think that without faith we may enjoy 
the eating and drinking thereof, or that that is the 
fruition of it, is hut to dream of gross carnal feeding, 
basely subjecting and binding ourselves to the elements 
and creatures. Whereas, by the advice of the Council 
of Nice, we ought to lift up our minds by faith, and 
leaving these inferior and earthly things, there seek it 
where the Sun of righteousness ever shineth. Take, 
then, this lesson, 0 thou that art desirous of this table, 
of Emissenus, a godly father, that when thou goest up 
to the reverend communion to he satisfied with spiritual 
meats, thou look up with faith upon the holy body and 
blood of thy God, thou marvel with reverence, thou touch 
it with the mind, thou receive it with the hand of thy 
heart, and thou take it fully with thy inward man * 
This, positively this, is the homily which, by impli¬ 
cation, we are required to regard as justifying the 
Directorium Anglicanum . There has scarcely ever been 
written a more utterly loathsome hook ; and it would he 
a comfort if every one of the foundations upon which it 


# Homilies , pp. 399, 400. 





ON RITUALISM. 


177 


rests were as completely rotten as this appeal to the 
Homilies. But, unfortunately, though there can be no 
doubt whatever about the general intention of the 
Reformers, yet many terms, especially technical terms, 
were allowed to remain in the Anglican formularies, 
through which almost every Popish superstition might 
easily make its way. Nay, even the Reformers them¬ 
selves were by no means completely set free from the 
bondage of old formularies. They had a firm grasp of 
the genuine substance; hut they still called it, with 
more or less inconsistency, by names that were wholly 
unsuitable. They had come to understand what the 
Lord’s Supper really was, but they were still vainly 
endeavouring to express the newly-discovered truth by 
the words which had long been appropriated to the 
mysteries of the mass. When Jesus Christ took bread 
and brake it—when, in fact, he instituted the Lord’s 
Supper—it was at a social meal. The apostles who 
were “present were dressed like ordinary Jews. Jesus 
Christ was to them a genuine friend, a true prophet of 
God; nay, indeed, such a revealer of the Father, that it 
seemed to them almost as if they had never known God 
before. In His miracles He had shown them not simply 
the power of God—which they had never doubted, and 
which had stifled them like a nightmare—but the 
gentleness of the power of the Almighty, its orderliness 
and its perfect love. In His parables He had made them 
understand how everything about them was a portion of 
the divine order ; how the common facts of life and the 
processes of nature were revelations of the kingdom of 
heaven ; how even Solomon himself, with all his glory, 
was not arrayed like one of the lilies of the field. 
“ Heaven was about them ; ” they felt that they were 

N 


178 


ON RITUALISM. 


living in heaven, that everything was full of God, that 
He was looking out upon His human children through 
every form of beauty, and teaching them in all sweet 
sounds to join in the great chorus with which all His 
works were praising Him. For many months the 
disciples had been spiritually living upon Christ. They 
knew perfectly well that their life would have been 
dwarfed and pool* without Him ; it was not their bodies 
that Christ had fed; on the contrary, they had fed His 
body. But, on the other hand, it was not the bodily 
life that was the highest. Who knows what these 
apostles were physically ? Or, in defiance of all tradition, 
imagination might picture them with all kinds of physical 
defects. One or other of them might have been blind, 
or dumb, or deaf, or lame, with all manner of “ thorns 
in the flesh; ” nevertheless, Jesus Christ had been to one 
and all of them, saving Judas Iscariot, “the bread of life.” 
So now at this Last Supper they could not he surprised 
when Jesus Christ uttered the words, “This is my body, 
this cup is the new covenant in my blood.” Could they 
possibly dream that He meant they were to eat Him ? 
That with their actual teeth they were to chew and grind 
His flesh, having carefully abstained even from first 
washing their teeth, lest pure water should have entered 
into their stomachs before the Incarnate God ? Is it 
possible that they could so far have forgotten what 
Christ Himself had said about that which goeth into the 
mouth ? They were met together to commemorate a 
great deliverance—the deliverance of the children of 
Israel out of the house of bondage. They were not 
members of the same family, not kinsmen according to 
the flesh; but they were brought together by a common 
spiritual purpose, and the reason why they were brought 


ON RITUALISM. 179 

together was simply this, that they had been bound 
together by Christ. 

If the words of the Saviour may be paraphrased into 
the elaborate rubrics of the Directorium Anglicanum, it 
may surely not be irreverent for any one to try to expand 
the meaning which those few words imply. “ When¬ 
ever you meet together to eat bread, remember Him who 
used to bless it for you; who made you understand that 
it was a gift of your Heavenly Father’s love, a symbol 
and a promise of the better bread which nourishes the 
soul. You know what the life eternal is. 4 This is life 
eternal, to know the only true God, and Jesus Christ, 
whom God has sent.’ That which feeds your spirit, 
which keeps alive and strengthens in you this eternal 
life, is myself. I am that true bread which comes down 
from heaven, and you would never have known how near 
God is to you, and how much He cares about you, if I 
had not come down to the world to live with you. It is 
through becoming like you, by means of that very body 
which can become hungry and thirsty and tired, and 
tortured with pain, that I helped you to know what God 
really is, and so nourished in you the eternal life. And 
you will know Him better still, and the life of your 
spirits will be stronger than ever, when I have poured out 
even my blood that you and all men may be set free from 
the bondage of sin. Whenever, then, you meet together, 
as you are met together now, thank God for the bread 
which strengtheneth man’s heart, and the wine that 
makes his heart glad; and remember that you have no 
need to be afraid even of them that kill the body, and 
after that have no more they can do. If you can get no 
food to eat, you must not forget ‘ that man doth not live 
by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of 

n 2 


180 


ON RITUALISM. 


the month of Gocl.’ I am the Word of God, and I have 
come down to you, and taken this body and this blood, 
in order that you may he nourished by God’s Word. It 
is much better for you that I should go away, or else, 
perhaps, you might begin to think that the flesh and 
blood I have taken, for the sake of being better able to 
teach you what God is, were themselves God. You 
might begin to think that when you could not see me, 
or speak to me, or hear me speak to you, you were quite 
out of God’s sight, and could have no fellowship with 
Him. Therefore I shall go away from you ; and when I 
am gone you will know me much better than you do 
now; you will have that very same spirit given to you 
which has enabled me always to trust in my Father, and 
always to do His will. When that spirit comes upon you, 
you will know that ‘ the Father is in me, and I in him, 
and you all one in us.’ But you must never forget that 
I really did come to you, and live with you ; that I used 
to eat bread and drink wine with you; that I had a real 
body and blood, such as yours. You must, therefore, 
keep your bodies holy and pure; and you must 
remember that what I made you understand about God 
by coming and living with you will be always true for 
you, and for all men. Meet together, therefore, as we 
are met together now, and break bread, and say, ‘ This 
is the body of Christ.’ Drink wine, and say, 4 This is 
the new covenant in Christ’s blood.’ When you say these 
words you will remember me, and you will remember 
your Father in heaven, and you will remember what sort 
of covenant of grace and mercy it is that God has made 
with you and with all men.” 

Something like this I believe to have been the mean¬ 
ing of Christ’s words at the Last Supper; and it must 


ON RITUALISM. 


181 


not be forgotten that the narrative of tlie evangelists, 
taken alone, contains only tlie slightest hint that the 
service was ever to be repeated. St. Matthew and St. 
Mark say nothing at all that w T ould imply such a repe¬ 
tition. St. Luke says only concerning the breaking of 
bread, “ This do in remembrance of me.” A very 
steadfast and probable tradition, however, identifies the 
author of the third Gospel with the friend and companion 
of St. Paul; and in that case, St. Luke’s account of the 
Last Supper may have been modified by the teaching of 
the apostle himself. The fullest account that we have 
of what Christ did, “ the same night in which he was 
betrayed,” is to be found in the Epistle to the Corinthians 
(1 Cor. xi. 23—26). “ For I have received of the Lord 

that which also I delivered unto you, that the Lord 
Jesus, the same night in which he was betrayed, took 
bread. And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and 
said, Take, eat, this is my body which is broken for you; 
this do in remembrance of me. After the same manner 
also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, This 
cup is the new testament in my blood : this do ye, as 
oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me. For as often 
as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show the 
Lord’s death till he come.” 

It is by no means easy to explain the words, “ I have 
received of the Lord;” though nothing is easier than to 
suggest a number of pure hypotheses, any one of which 
would, if true, furnish a sufficient explanation. Bengel, 
for instance, cuts the knot of the difficulty by the single 
word “ immediate .” So Olsliausen affirms, without so 
much even as attempting to prove, that “ Exegetically 
the diro rov Kvpiov cannot be otherwise received than 
with the antithesis ovtc dir ’ dv6pd>iraiv, as expressly 


182 


ON RITUALISM. 


stated by Paul in Gal. i. 12. Accordingly we have liere 
an authentic declaration of the risen Saviour Himself 
concerning His sacrament.” There can be no doubt 
whatever that St. Paul claims to have received the 
Gospel, not of man, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ. 
But there is not the least reason to suppose that Jesus 
Christ could reveal truth only by Himself appearing in 
a bodily form ; in that case, indeed, it is difficult to 
perceive how the resurrection and ascension of the 
Saviour can be otherwise regarded than as a most serious 
loss. In fact, this was the very mistake into which St. 
Paul’s enemies were continually falling; they disputed 
his apostleship for that very reason that he had not 
known Christ after the flesh. Dean Alford simply 
asserts, dogmatically, “ Received from the Lord by 
special revelation,”—with reference to Gal. i. 12. Dean 
Stanley, on the other hand, who is much more unfettered 
in his treatment of the Pauline epistles, says, “ The use 
of the words 7 rape\a/3ov and 7 rapeSco/ca, as in xv. 3, is 
against his derivation of the fact from immediate reve¬ 
lation. But the introduction of the phrase ‘ from the 
Lord ’ may perhaps mean that he had confirmed to him 
by revelation what he already knew as a fact.” But 
whatever the meaning of this disputed phrase may be, 
St. Paul’s account of the institution of the Lord’s 
Supper, where it differs from the narrative of the 
evangelists, renders that narrative more simple and in¬ 
telligible. The words, This is my body , if taken alone, 
might possibly be tortured into the expression of a 
profound mystery, partly theological, partly philosophi¬ 
cal, and chiefly carnal. But the words, Do this in 
remembrance of me, show us exactly what the mystery 
is ; and it may safely be affirmed that if the apostles had 


ON RITUALISM. 


183 


known that Jesns Christ meant anything like what the 
mediaeval doctors supposed Him to mean, the disorders 
of the Corinthian Church would have been impossible. 
But anybody who can get the mass out of the first 
Epistle to the Corinthians is past argument. 

I believe, then, that in the bread and wine employed 
in the Eucharist there is actually no presence of Jesus 
Christ whatever of any sort. After consecration the 
elements remain exactly what they were before con¬ 
secration. The whole and the only effect of the 
consecration is upon the minds of men, and not upon 
the matter of the sacrament, much less upon Almighty 
God. If this be not accepted as the true state of the 
case, it matters next to nothing what theory of the real 
presence in the bread and wine may be adopted. It is 
the great defect of the Book of Common Prayer and of 
the other formularies of the Established Church that, 
while distinctly excluding the dogma of transubstanti- 
ation, they have left room for, and have actually 
encouraged, a great number of theories, not one of 
which is a bit more reasonable or a bit less superstitious 
than transubstantiation itself. When the author of the 
Christian Year publishes a treatise upon Eucliaristical 
Adoration , and when the members of the Church of 
England are taught that when they swallow the con¬ 
secrated wafer they take not only the flesh and blood of 
Jesus, but the whole Godhead into their bodies, does any¬ 
body in his senses care one jot or tittle by what particular 
theory these monstrous absurdities may be justified ? 

Transubstantiation itself belongs rather to philosophy 
than to theology. It involves a certain belief about 
substance and attributes which, whether true or false, 
can by no means be confined to the substance and 


184 


ON RITUALISM. 


attributes of bread and wine. Modern philosophy, the 
philosophy that derives all its information from the 
senses, refuses to acknowledge the existence of substance 
at all. Bread, this philosophy teaches us, is but the 
name we give to a number of co-existing sensations in 
ourselves. But, supposing there be some actual sub¬ 
stance which differs from other substances, and which is 
manifested to us by those differences, if we recognize its 
presence by a certain chemical composition, colour, scent, 
taste, density, then, in the absence of all these marks 
and characteristics, the substance itself would cease to 
attract our attention, or would become identified with 
some other substance. In like manner, the presence of 
a totally different set of marks and characteristics would 
indicate to us the presence of an altogether different 
substance. In other words, we recognize the presence 
of a substance simply by its attributes, and no other¬ 
wise. The attributes of bread, and the attributes of 
flesh and blood, are perfectly well known; and these 
attributes are not only different from each other, but 
they are mutually exclusive of each other. Of course 
this would be acknowledged even by the Boman divines 
themselves; but, in order to explain the real presence of 
the body and blood of Christ in the consecrated bread 
and wine of ihe Eucharist, they not only distinguish, 
but they attempt even to separate, the substance from 
its accidents. It is, of course, conceivable that two 
towers might have been built upon separate foundations. 
One tower, for instance, might be at Dover, and the 
other at Calais. It is just conceivable that the towers 
themselves, remaining exactly as they were, their foun¬ 
dations should be exchanged, so that the Dover tower 
might have the Calais foundation, and the Calais tower the 


ON RITUALISM. 


185 


Dover foundation. Somewhat in the same way the Roman 
divines imagined that they could deal with the accidents 
of the Eucharistic bread and wine and the body and 
blood of Christ. It was perfectly obvious that, in respect 
to the accidents, the body and blood of Christ did not 
come into the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. If not only 
the substance hut the accidents of Christ’s body had been 
produced by the words of consecration, there would have 
appeared upon the altar—nay, upon every altar in 
Christendom—nay, more, even in the mouth of every 
communicant—a grown-up living man, between five and 
six feet high, with hair and eyes and teeth, and literal 
flesh and hones, such as all grown-up men have. As 
such a miracle as this was unquestionably never wrought 
by any words of consecration, the Catholic divines tell us 
the miracle is wrought, not upon the accidents, hut upon 
the substance of the bread and wine. The accidents of 
bread and wine are certainly still discernible by the 
senses ; while on the contrary, the accidents of the body 
and blood of Christ certainly are not. But in fact, we 
are assured, there is on the altar after consecration a 
living, adult man, and the infinite God Himself, with the 
weight, the chemical composition, the scent, the colour, 
and the density of a little round piece of bread. 

If this explanation satisfies anybody, well and good; 
and if it had been thought profane that the change of 
substance should have been made immediately, and 
by a single leap, it would have been quite possible to 
assume that there were millions of intermediate transub- 
stantiations. Why not, for instance, affirm (because 
nobody could disprove it) that at the moment of uttering 
the words, “ This is my body” the substance of Christ 
stands first of all under the accidents of an angel, then 


186 


ON RITUALISM. 


under those of a man, then, one after another, under those 
of the nobler of the animals, and then, at last, under the 
bread ? Or why not affirm that, while there are the 
accidents only of bread and wine, there are the substances 
both of bread and of Christ ? The absurdity of all these 
explanations is that they are mere moonshine; and that, 
while human language continues to exist, substance and 
accidents may and must be distinguished, but never can 
he separated. On the other hand, it is not simply the 
explanation offered by the Roman Church that is foolish 
and offensive ; the evil lies in the thing to be explained. 
If in any way whatever the man Christ Jesus is so 
present in the bread and wine of the Eucharist, that 
whoever or whatever eats the one eats also the other, 
then the mode of explaining this astounding fact is a 
matter of the most trifling importance. Indeed, not 
only is the Communion Office of the Church of England 
independent of the doctrine of transubstantiation, hut 
so also is the Canon of the Mass. The Canon of the 
Mass had been used many generations before the dogma 
of transubstantiation was defined ; and even now nothing 
short of a miracle of exegesis can make the two con¬ 
sistent. “ Offerimus praeclarae Majestati tuae de tuis 
donis ac datis, hostiam puram, hostiam sanctam, hostiam 
immaculatam, Panem sanctum vitae aeternae, et Calicem 
salutis perpetuae. Supra quae propitio ac sereno vultu 
respicere digneris; et accepta habere, sicuti accepta 
habere dignatus es munera pueri tui justi Abel, et 
sacrificium patriarchae nostri Abrahae, et quod tihi ohtulit 
summus sacerdos tuus Melcliisedech, sanctum sacrificium 
immaculatam hostiam.’* 

It is difficult to perceive how these words, uttered 
after the consecration, could he honestly used by those 



ON RITUALISM. 


187 


who believe that the sacrifice offered in the Eucharist is 
the very body and blood of Jesus Christ Himself. Why, 
indeed, compare the Son of God Himself to the offering 
of Abel, or of Abraham, or of Melchizedek, when it has 
been the constant teaching of the Catholic Church 
that those sacrifices had been themselves accepted only 
for the sake of this ? 

Unhappily, however, all that the Anglican divines can 
he persuaded to say is, that that explanation of the 
real presence which is called transubstantiation, is not 
the true explanation, hut that on the other hand the 
thing which transubstantiation is intended to explain 
is itself a fact; that the body and blood of Christ are 
really present in the bread and wine of the Eucharist as 
they are not present anywhere else, and as they were 
not present there before the words of consecration. 
Eidley, for instance, in his last examination, examined 
by the Bishop of Lincoln, answers : “ My Lord,* .... 
both you and I agree herein, that in the sacrament is 
the very true and natural body and blood of Christ, even 
that which was born of the Virgin Mary, which ascended 
into heaven, which sitteth on the right hand of God the 
Father, which shall come from thence to judge the quick 
and the dead ; only we differ in moclo, in the way and 
manner of being; we confess all one thing to he in the 
sacrament, and dissent in the manner of being there. 
I, being fully by God’s Word thereunto persuaded, con¬ 
fess Christ’s natural body to be in the sacrament indeed 
by spirit and grace, because that whosoever receiveth 
worthily that bread and wine, receiveth effectuously 


* “ Works of Bisliop Eidley ” (Parker Society’s Edition), 

pp. 273, 274. 



188 


ON RITUALISM. 


Christ’s body, and drinketh His blood (that is, be is 
made effectually partaker of His passion); and you make 
a grosser kind of being, enclosing a natural, a lively, and 
a moving body, under the shape and form of bread and 
wine. Now, this difference considered, to the question 
thus I answer :—that in the sacrament of the altar is the 
natural body and blood of Christ vere et realiter, indeed 
and really, for spiritually, by grace and efficacy; for so 
every worthy receiver receiveth the very true body of 
Christ. But if you mean really and indeed, so that 
thereby 3^011 would include a lively and a moveable body 
under the forms of bread and wine, then, in that 
sense, is not Christ’s body in the sacrament really and 
indeed. ” 

Again, the well-known words of Hooker affirm a 
doctrine about the real presence against which there is 
every objection, except such as are merely metaplij'sical, 
which could be urged against either the Roman or 
Lutheran l^potliesis. “Let it therefore be sufficient 
for me, presenting myself at the Lord’s table, to know 
what there I receive from Him, without searching or 
inquiring () of the manner how Christ performeth His 
promise; let disputes and questions, enemies to piety, 
abatements of true devotion, and hitherto in this cause 
but over patiently heard, let them take their rest; let 
curious and sharp-witted men beat their heads about 
w r liat questions themselves will, the very letter of the 
word of Chr.st giveth plain security that these mysteries 
do as nails fasten us to His very cross; that by them we 
draw out as touching efficacy, force and virtue, even the 
blood of His gored side ; in the wounds of our Redeemer 
we there dip our tongues, we are dyed red both within 
and without, our hunger is satisfied and our thirst for 



ON RITUALISM. 


189 


ever quenched ; they are things wonderful which he 
feeletli, great which he seeth, and unheard of which he 
uttereth, whose soul is possessed of the Paschal Lamb, 
and made joyful in the strength of this new wine; this 
bread hath in it more than the substance which our eyes 
behold; this cup, hallowed with solemn benediction, 
availetli to the endless life and welfare both of soul and 
body, in that it serveth as well for a medicine to heal 
our infirmities and purge our sins as for a sacrifice of 
thanksgiving; with touching it sanctifieth, it enligliteneth 
with belief, it truly conformeth us unto the image of 
Jesus Christ; what these elements are in themselves it 
skilletli not, it is enough that to me which take them 
they are the body and blood of Christ, His promise in 
witness hereof sufficetli, His word He knoweth which 
w 7 ay to accomplish; why should any cogitation possess 
the mind of a faithful communicant but this ; 0 my 
God, Thou art true; 0 my soul, thou art happy ?”* 

All this sort of pious meditation would be exceedingly 
reverent if it were in the least degree necessary; but 
why torture one’s mind with any sense of mystery at all ? 
Nothing but the most explicit words could require any¬ 
body to believe that, by the mere words of consecration, 
any change whatever would be produced in the bread 
and wine; but in fact, Jesus Christ does not say a single 
syllable about consecration. According to St. Matthew 
and St. Mark, He does not say a single word about the 
repetition of the service. According to St. Luke and 
St. Paul, He says, “ Do this in remembrance of me.” 
What the thing they were to do really was is open to 
very much discussion. What is certainly plain is, that 


* “ Ecclesiastical Polity,” v., lxvii., 13. 




190 


ON RITUALISM. 


they were to eat the bread and drink the wine. Con¬ 
sidering what Christ had done in the Last Supper, they 
were to take bread, bless it, and break it, and give 
thanks. But what single word of Scripture is there to 
shut us up to the belief that what Christ intended was 
really to give this command:—“ I hereby empower you 
to set apart men to be my priests, and I also give you 
authority to appoint men to be your own successors and 
to have the same power that you yourselves have; in 
order that there may be an apostolical succession of 
priests through all time. I command each one of these 
priests to consider himself my representative ; to take 
bread, bless it, and break it, and say, exactly as if he 
were myself, ‘ This is my body; ’ and I promise that the 
bread shall then become my body, and whoever eats it 
shall eat me.” There is nothing like this in the New 
Testament, and there is nothing in the conduct of the 
apostles to indicate that they believed it. And we 
might have expected clear references to this mystic and 
supernatural character of the supper more in the first 
age than in any other, because the dogma and the 
ceremony being quite new, and in many respects re¬ 
pulsive both to Jews and to Gentiles, would be in great 
danger of mistake or neglect. 

But even if the actual body in which Jesus Christ 
appeared among us could be made present even then it 
would be idolatry to worship it. Surely Church history, 
and especially the history of the Sacraments, has proved 
the profound wisdom of Christ’s words:—“ It is 

EXPEDIENT FOR YOU THAT I GO AWAY.” 

But what I wish to direct special attention to is the 
fact that any doctrine of the real presence of Christ’s 
body in the consecrated bread —as distinguished from 



ON RITUALISM. 


191 


His presence through the whole Sacrament to the spirits 
of the communicants—is perfectly certain to produce 
every abomination and superstition which has grown 
out of or generated the dogma of transubstantiation. 
Already the author of The Christian Year adores the 
Eucharist; already there are in the Established Church 
litanies and a “ Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament; ” 
already there are Cautels for mass—Anglican mass— 
which are as loathsome as they are absurd. Even the 
Bishop of St. David’s acknowledges that the Ritualists 
have not transgressed the orthodox boundaries of the 
Reformed Church in the matter of transubstantiation; 
but it makes no difference whatever in practice. Tran¬ 
substantiation is not necessary to superstition. 

The Directorium Anglicanum is a choice specimen of 
what may be done and taught within the Reformed and 
Established Church. It has passed, in an expensive 
form, through large editions ; and is regarded as a work 
of no mean authority. This, then, and such as this, 
may be believed, and taught and done, in any parish in 
England— for a while. Of course the Ritualists regard 
the Consecration Prayer as “ the Canon,” and proceed 
as follows :— 

“ The Canon. —This is so called because it has been laid down 
as the rule or canon which is to be rigidly followed by the priest 
who offers the Holy Sacrifice. The Prayer of Consecration— 
containing the Commemoration of the Passion, the Invocation, 
and the Consecration Proper, i.e., the Words of Institution. 

“ The celebrant does just what Christ did, as near as we can 
imitate His action. He takes, when he says, ‘ He took; ’ and 
presents to God the element; he breaks, when he says, ‘ He 
brake it,’ and designs it to reception by laying his hand upon it, 
and in a manner imparts it when he says, Our Lord gave it, 
saying, ‘ Take, eat,’ etc.; and he makes it the body of Christ by 
the words of consecration, ‘ Hoc est corpus meum.’” —p. 72. 


192 


ON RITUALISM. 


“ Some of the English clergy say the following before the 
Prayer of Consecration, in secret:—‘ Most merciful God, look gra¬ 
ciously upon the gifts now lying before Thee, and send down Thy 
Holy Spirit upon this Sacrifice, that He may make this bread 
the body of Thy Christ, and this cup the blood of Thy Christ ; 
and that all who are partakers thereof may obtain remission of 
their sins, be confirmed in godliness, and be filled with Thy 
Holy Spirit. Amen.' But the English (as the Roman) Church 
holds, that the words of Institution are sufficient for the conse¬ 
cration, as may be gathered from the rubric concerning the con¬ 
secration of further bread and wine. 

“ Though it be true that God the Father effects the consecra¬ 
tion of the elements by the operation of God the Holy Ghost, it 
is unnecessary to pray expressly for the Holy Ghost to con¬ 
secrate the elements of bread and wine, because God knows 
perfectly all that is necessary for a valid consecration.”—p. 74. 

“ The celebrant at the Consecration Prayer inclines humbly, 
extensis manibus. Before the recital of the Words of Institution 
the celebrant should remove the pall from the chalice. At the 
words ‘ body ’ and ‘ blood,’ he should make a cross over the 
elements. At the words ‘Who, in the same night,’ he should 
rest his elbows on the altar, bowing down. The paten and also 
the chalice are held in the left hand; the sign of the cross being 
made with the right hand. After the words, ‘This is my body, 
which is given for you,’ the ‘ liostia ’ should be placed on the 
paten, and the celebrant with his assistants should reverently 
genuflect. Then, rising, the celebrant should at once elevate it 
with the first finger and thumb of both hands, for the worship of 
the faithful, while he is saying, ‘ Do this in remembrance of me.’ 
After the words, ‘ This is my blood of the New Testament,’ he 
should place the chalice on the centre of the corporal, and with 
his assistants genuflect again; after which he should in like 
manner elevate the chalice with both hands while he is saying, 
‘ Do this as oft as ye shall drink of it in remembrance of me.’ 
After the consecration, the celebrant will keep the fingers and 
thumbs of each hand joined until after the ablutions. The lay- 
assistants at the altar, and members of the choir, should be 
instructed to bow profoundly at the consecration and elevation. 

“ After the Consecration Prayer it is most desirable that no 
person passes before the blessed Sacrament, without genuflecting, 
bowing, or some token of reverence.”—pp. 76, 77. (Third Edition). 


ON RITUALISM. 


193 


“ Preces Secrete may be said by the celebrant standing 
humbly before the midst of the altar. The following are strongly 
recommended. {Ex Missali Sarum .) They should be written 
out plainly, printed or illuminated :— 

“ Dicend.e post Consecrationem. 

“ Unde et memores, Domine, nos servi Tui, sed et plebs Tua 
sancta, ejusdem Christi filii Tui Domini Dei nostri tarn beatse 
Passionis, necnon et ab inferis Resurrectionis, sed et in coelos 
gloriosce Ascensionis, offerimus praeclarae Majestati Tuae de Tuis 
donis ac datis, Hostiam pu + ram, Hostiam sane + tarn, Hos- 
tiam imma + culatam : Panem sane + turn vitae aeternae, et 
Cali + cem salutis perpetuae. 

“Supra quae propitio ac sereno vultu respicere digneris; et 
accepta habere, sicuti accepta habere dignatus es munera pueri 
Tui justi Abel, et sacrificium Patriarchae nostri Abrahae: et 
quod Tibi obtulit summus sacerdos Tuus Melchisedech, sanctum 
sacrificium, immaculatam Hostiam. Supplices Te rogamus Om- 
nipotens Deus; jube haec perferri per manus sancti Angeli Tui 
in sublime altare Tuum, in conspectu Divinae Majestatis Tuae: 
ut quotquot ex liac altaris participatione, sacrosanctum Filii Tui 
Cor + pus et San + guinem sumpserimus : omni bene + dictione 
coelesti gratia repleamur. Per eundem Christum Dominum 
nostrum. Amen. Memento etiam, Domine animarum famu- 
lorum famularumque Tuarum (N. et N.) qui nos praecesserunt 
cum signo fidei, et dormiunt in somno pacis: ipsis Domine, et 
omnibus in Christo quiescentibus, locum refrigerii, lucis et pacis, 
ut indulgeas, deprecamur. Per eundem Christum Dominum 
nostrum. Amen. 

“ Nobis quoque peccatoribus famulis Tuis de multitudine 
miserationum Tuarum sperantibus, partem aliquam et societatem 
donare digneris cum Tuis sanctis Apostolis et Martyribus: cum 
Joanne, Stephano, Matthia, Barnaba, Ignatio, Alexandro, Mar- 
cellino, Petro, Felicitate, Perpetua, Agatha, Lucia, Agnete, 
Caecilia, Anastatia, et cum omnibus Sanctis Tuis: intra quorum 
nos consortium non estimator meriti, sed veniae, quaesumus, lar- 
gitor admitte. Per Christum Dominum nostrum. Per quem 
haec omnia Domine, semper bona creas, sancti + ficas, vivi + ficas, 
bene + dicis, et praestas nobis. Per ip + sum, et cum ip + so, et 
in ip + so est Tibi Deo Patri Omnipo + tenti, imitate Spiritus + 
Sancti omnis honor et gloria. Per omnia saecula saeculorum. 
Amen. 


I 


0 


194 


ON RITUALISM. 


“ The above should be said with no pauses nor delays; imme¬ 
diately after the elevation : so that not too much time be taken 
up, nor the service too considerably lengthened.”—pp. 78, 79. 

“ The communicants should be careful to kneel where they are 
instructed to kneel, and should hold the head and body erect. 
It is obviously impossible to communicate people who put their 
faces on the floor, or who kneel off and away from the kneeling 
cushions, without the greatest danger to the blessed Sacrament, 
and the most painful and singular inconvenience to the clergy.” # 

Such are the new Rubrics, the interpolated and secret 
prayers, which are meant to fit, and do fit, the Anglican 
dogma of the real presence. But lest we should 
possibly miss the grossly carnal character of this 
doctrine, we have the following “ Cautels of the 
Mass — 

“The seventh Cautel is, that before mass the priest do not 
wash his mouth or teeth, but only his lips from without with his 
mouth closed as he has need, lest perchance he should inter¬ 
mingle the taste of water with his saliva. After mass also he 
should beware of expectorations as much as possible, until he 
shall have eaten and drunken, lest by chance anything shall have 
remained between his teeth or in his fauces , which, by expect¬ 
orating, he might eject.”—p. 109. 

“ Also : if a fly or spider or any such thing should fall into the 
chalice before consecration, or even if the priest shall apprehend 
that poison hath been put in, the wine which is in the chalice 
ought to be poured out, and the chalice ought to be washed, and 
other wane with water put therein to be consecrated. But if any 
of these (contingencies) befall after the consecration, the fly or 
spider or such like thing should be warily taken, oftentimes 
diligently washed between the fingers, and should then be burnt, 
and the -ablution, together with the burnt ashes, must be put in 
the piscina. But the poison ought by no means to be taken, but 
such blood with which poison has been mingled should be 
reserved in a comely vessel, together with the relics.”—p. 113. 

“ If the Eucharist hath fallen to the ground, the place where it 


* Directorium Anglicanum, p. 81. 



ON RITUALISM. 


195 


lay must be scraped, and fire kindled thereon, and tlie aslies 
reserved beside the altar.”—p. 114. 

“ Also : if any one, by any accident of the throat, vomit up the 
Eucharist, the vomit ought to be burned, and the ashes ought to 
be reserved near the altar. And if it shall be a cleric, monk, 
presbyter, or deacon, he must do penance for forty days, a bishop 
seventy days, a laic thirty. But if he vomits from infirmity, he 
must do penance for five days. But who does not keep the 
Sacrament well, so that a mouse or other animal devour it, he 
must do penance forty days.”—p. 115. 

It might indeed be objected that, even granting tlie 
real presence in tlie consecrated elements, it can 
scarcely be necessary for the priesthood to treat the 
body of Christ as if it were a little doll. But apart 
from the mere frivolousness of the ceremonials and 
Cautels of the Mass, wliat possible objection can, by any 
Anglican, be taken to them ? If Jesus Christ, soul and 
body, flesh, blood, and divinity, is really and objectively 
present in a bit of bread, there is certainly every reason 
why the bit of bread should be taken care of. It is 
certain that in that case the Christ could be as com¬ 
pletely eaten by a mouse as by a human being; and a 
fly might sip—and after all why not ?—the blood that 
redeemed the world. If the wafer be Christ, then, like 
all other food, it is subject when eaten to the processes 
of digestion, assimilation, and excretion; and in spite 
of all the care the massing priest may take, innumerable 
Christs must have already found their way into the 
piscina—and who will tell us what becomes of them 
then ? 

I ought not perhaps, after all, to call this doctrine 
blasphemous. It is rather “a fond thing,” and utterly 
unproveable. It only puts into a very gross form what 
multitudes of people believe about the omnipresence of 

o 2 


196 


ON RITUALISM. 


God. The blasphemy, the dishonour done to God’s 
character, lies in the theory which alone could justify 
any doctrine whatever of the real presence ; for any 
such doctrine implies not so much that the incarnation 
exalted humanity to God, but rather that it turned the 
Eternal Word Himself into a mere thing that could he 
eaten and digested. It implies that Almighty God, who 
gave men reason and intellect, and bodily senses, can 
find a sort of pleasure in tantalizing His own creatures, 
and rendering His own gifts worthless. Our senses are 
to lead us astray, our intellects are to he continually 
curbed, thwarted, and contradicted, and we are to 
suppose that the great merit of trusting God must arise 
out of the total absence of every reason for confiding in 
Him. It implies, moreover, a doctrine of sacrifice 
which, when applied even to the one offering of Christ 
upon the cross, is heathenish ; and when applied to the 
perpetual sacrifices of the mass, reduces the whole 
doctrine of the atonement to an absurdity. 

English people outside the ranks of the clergy have 
almost forgotten this real presence. Having been dis¬ 
tinctly assured in their own Communion Office that by 
kneeling at the Lord’s Supper “ no adoration is intended, 
or ought to he done, either unto the sacramental bread 
or wine there bodily received, or unto any corporal 
presence of Christ’s natural flesh and blood,” they have 
gone on believing that Christ’s body was in heaven, and 
that nothing but bread and wine was on God’s hoard. 
Because in the absence of all outward forms of homage, 
men had almost been delivered from the mischievous 
superstition of worshipping what their own hands had 
made, therefore have the Ritualists restored the forms 
that they may bring back the idolatry. It is the doctrine 


ON RITUALISM. 


197 


of the real presence far more than the ceremonial of 
the mass which at heart they care for. And persistence 
in the ceremonial for a single generation will do far 
more to bring back Popish superstitions than all the 
books of dry argument that were ever written. 

Of course the restoration of the mass is inseparable 
from a certain theory of the nature and necessity of a 
priesthood, and of apostolical succession. That theory 
belongs not to the Roman Church only; it is a natural 
product of human frailty. The experiment of applying 
it to practice has indeed been tried with so appalling a 
completeness in the Koman Church, that it can no 
longer he doubtful what priestcraft is, and what priest¬ 
craft will do. But men so much prefer to be under 
authority, to serve God by deputy, and even in self-abase¬ 
ment to prostrate themselves in the deepest degradation, 
that they are continually condoning all the offences of 
priests, and persuading themselves that the gigantic 
tyranny by which not only individual souls but whole 
nations have been oppressed was the not inevitable 
abuse of necessary and beneficial powers. No mistake 
can be greater and more fatal. It is unquestionably the 
inevitable effect of powers that are not only unnecessary 
hut malignant. A consistent priest cannot help being a 
tyrant, and in a generation or two priests become not 
only tyrants hut demoralized; they become cruel, or 
crafty, or both. It should be then distinctly understood 
that the great lesson which Ritualism is teaching to 
English men and women, hoys and girls, is the necessity 
of the priest. Only the priest can administer those 
sacraments which are essential means of grace, and 
pronounce that absolution which is the loosing of sin. 
Only priests can teach the Church authoritatively what 


198 


ON RITUALISM. 


is tlie truth of God, and safely guide them in the way of 
life. What then can he the use of free discussion ? 
We may argue till doomsday, and we can only arrive at 
one or other of two conclusions—either at the doctrine 
that the priest approves, or at the doctrine he does not 
approve. If the latter, we are wrong, and must give up 
our own opinions or he damned. If the former, argu¬ 
ment was wholly useless. How can Churchmen, for 
instance, be hesitating about such a matter as the 
“ Conscience Clause ”? Can an uninspired layman have 
a mind of his own on such a matter as the proper 
education of the young? Is he to say to a divinely 
authorized instructor, Because the parents of these 
little children choose to live in heresy and schism, you 
must let them alone, and abstain from teaching them 
the saving doctrines of the Church ? Nay, if this 
doctrine of the priesthood is once more to he dominant 
in England, mortal sins such as heresy and schism will 
no longer he tolerated. Not only will the souls of the 
little children he snatched as brands from the burning, 
hut the bodies of their heretical and schismatical 
parents would he flung in. Are not kings and legis¬ 
lators, members of parliament and their constituents, 
alike hound to sit as humble disciples at the feet of 
those whom Jesus Christ has sent into the world to be 
Elis representatives ? Is it not therefore plain that the 
civil law must always follow the ecclesiastical law, and 
the nation become the bond slave of the Church ? The 
power to administer sacraments implies also the power 
of refusing to administer them ; the power of absolving 
implies the power of retaining sins ; the power to bless 
implies the power to excommunicate. It is perfectly 
certain which of these powers would be most exercised 


ON RITUALISM. 


199 


if priests had their own way. The comparative harm¬ 
lessness of the priest in this country, and even in this 
age, arises from the fact that there are some millions of 
educated men and women in Europe who regard his 
claims with supreme contempt, and would just as soon 
have a priest’s curse as his blessing. 

The relation of this movement to the law of England 
is still extremely uncertain. Judicial decisions by the 
supreme court are as yet few and unimportant, and the 
opinions of counsel, even the most eminent, are very 
conflicting. The Liturgy, Articles, and Homilies are 
so mutually inconsistent, that it is impossible to know 
how much of Ritualism is legal and how much is 
illegal. But this very fact is excessively demoralizing. 
First, because everybody knows that a decision might 
quite easily he obtained. The bishops are some of them 
in favour of the movement; and not one of them has 
the courage to bring the matter to an issue. It is 
simply absurd to pretend that the costliness of ecclesias¬ 
tical procedure is a sufficient excuse for inaction. A 
single letter from the Bishop of London published in 
The Times newspaper would be certain to secure, before 
the end of a week, a fund which would he sufficient to 
obtain a judicial decision of every disputed point. But 
the fact is, a settlement is not wished, but dreaded. It 
could scarcely fail to split the Church in pieces, and 
probably to dis-estahlish religion altogether. The 
Bishop of Gloucester talks, with a piety that might with 
advantage be less oily, of the great blessing of unity, and 
the singular mercy of God, which, at the time of the 
Gorham controversy, preserved “ Our Beloved Church ” 
from schism. Can any man of ordinary discernment 
fail to perceive in what way the Church was preserved 


200 


ON RITUALISM. 


from schism ? It was preserved from schism by being 
robbed of dogma, and many people would eagerly add, 
by being robbed also of common honesty. Was any real 
wound in the Anglican Church healed, any doubt set 
at rest, any truth of God affirmed, any fatal error 
anathematized and cast out ? Nothing of the sort. 
The Church of England simply said, “ My beloved 
children, I don’t know anything whatever about baptism. 
I don’t know whether it regenerates a child or does not. 
I don’t know whether it is necessary to salvation or not, 
and I wish to goodness you would not bother me about 
any such trifle. Just preach whatever you like on the 
subject. The rector can say that baptism is necessary 
to salvation in the morning, and the curate can say that 
it is not in the afternoon; it doesn’t make a hit of 
difference, and you are very stupid children to be making 
a fuss in the family about any such trifle.” 

That is what the Bishop of Gloucester unctuously 
calls “ God in His great mercy preserving the unity of 
the Church.” In the judgment of almost all impartial 
observers, the Gorham compromise was neither more nor 
less than a foul blot upon the honour of the English 
Church. There was not a single sect in this country 
which failed to perceive its true character, and to regard 
it with undisguised contempt. The Church of England 
was established by law in order that its dogmas might he 
fixed, and that the conduct of public worship might he 
delivered from the caprices of individuals, and subject 
to the control of a recognized authority. It is a public 
scandal that, in a Church established by law, the law 
should he utterly uncertain, and that both dogma and 
ritual should he in such hopeless confusion that amid 
much that is uncertain one thing alone seems certain,— 


ON RITUALISM. 


201 


that at least a full half of the clergy must he, whether 
they intend it or not, breaking the laws of their country, 
and abusing the souls of their people. 

That this unfixedness of ecclesiastical law has, to 
a certain extent, been serviceable to freedom it is 
impossible to deny ; but freedom could have been far 
better served in another way, and one which at the same 
time would have strengthened common honesty. The 
fact is that there never, at any single moment of time, 
was one valid reason why any particular form of 
Protestant dogma and worship should be established by 
law rather than another. From the time of Henry 
YIIL’s quarrel with the Pope to this present moment, 
the Church of England has been in a perpetual flux— 
never being but always becoming. Until the death of 
Henry it was in doctrine unreformed, and the change 
which it had undergone was almost exclusively political. 

■ Edward VI. and his advisers were far too Protestant for 
the people, and when Mary came to the throne the old 
creed and the old ritual were more than tolerated by the 
great bulk of the nation. In the reign of Elizabeth, 
what called itself the Church of England was opposed 
by a powerful Romanist faction on the one side, and by 
the discontent and stubborn energy of the Puritans on 
the other. During the Stuart period, not to mention its 
temporary destruction, there were all manner of con¬ 
ferences for the sake of effecting a compromise between 
opposing parties, and modifying both the creed and the 
ritual. There were two different, very different, Prayer 
Books set forth by authority in the reign of Edward VI., 
and another by Elizabeth, and again by Charles II.; 
and at this very moment there is not a single human 
being in the whole world who knows exactly what the 


202 


ON RITUALISM. 


Anglican formularies mean. In those days there was a 
mad desire in everybody to settle everything. Lutherans, 
Zwinglians, Calvinists, Anglicans, Presbyterians, though 
but yesterday they had all broken loose from the 
mightiest and oldest Church in Christendom, were all so 
satisfied of their own complete soundness, that they 
wanted their own little set of dogmas and ceremonies to 
be set forth by authority and guaranteed till the day of 
judgment. Yet even they themselves were changing 
every hour, and their descendants have been changing 
ever since. There is surely nothing to despise in this 
restlessness of the human mind, this eager pursuit of 
what is higher, and truer and better. But what infatu¬ 
ation is it that leads men to imagine that, if it were 
only possible, it would be the highest virtue and the 
most far-reaching expediency to imprison the free spirit ? 

I must compress into a very brief space what I have 
yet to say in this essay about the Ritualists and 
Ritualism. There is scarcely anything dogmatic to 
distinguish them from Roman Catholics ; and they also, 
like the Romanists, profess allegiance to authority, and 
affect to despise what they call liberty of conscience. 
But the Romanists can see quite plainly that though the 
Anglo-Catholics rest upon authority it is an authority of 
their own determining . They determine for them¬ 
selves, according to their own private judgment, which 
popes and councils are infallible, and which canons 
and decrees are binding upon their consciences. They 
accept both dogma and ceremonial at some one parti¬ 
cular point of their own choosing, and refuse to move 
on further along the course of ecclesiastical develop¬ 
ment. Therefore they are schismatical, infected with 
the fatal vice of private judgment; and even Dr. Pusey’s 


ON RITUALISM. 


203 


Eirenicon —is not its title written in the index of for¬ 
bidden books ? 

In relation to the Bible, they accept it as an authority, 
but not as the authority : as at first it needed for its own 
canonical authority, so it needs now for its true inter¬ 
pretation and right use, the authority of the Church. 

In the state and in society Kitualism is the signal for 
revolution. It is surely impossible that the great mass 
of Englishmen should ever again believe the dogmas 
upon which priestcraft and Ritualism are based; but 
their disbelief, and that only , will save us from the old 
tyrannies. Even now the influence of hateful dogmas 
is widely felt; the old bitterness of religious controversy 
is becoming again intensified. Again, “ Dissenters”— 
which, at any rate, means men who are honest enough 
to leave a church whose laws they do not know, and 
therefore cannot obey—are abused as heretics, as men 
infected with a contagious leprosy of soul-destroying 
error. Priests are again sowing discord in families, 
and trying to undo the charities which have thus far 
survived ecclesiastical intolerance. Even clergymen who 
are not Ritualist are unable, in some districts, to open 
schools or seek for pupils with any reasonable hope of 
success. Petty persecutions of all kinds are freely 
employed. The priests are taking possession of us, as 
if the Lord had delivered us into their hands for a prey. 
They demand our souls and bodies, our wives and 
children, our lives and liberties, “ in the name of the 
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” 

It is quite impossible to over-estimate the importance 
of this crisis, or to search too earnestly for the cure of 
the mischief. Nothing can justify mere lawlessness, 
so long as a nation is fairly represented and makes its 


204 


ON RITUALISM. 


own laws. The riots at St. George’s-in-the-East pro¬ 
bably helped what they were meant to destroy. But it 
would he a sight not without its moral grandeur, if 
some stern old prophet would burn men’s hones upon 
these altars of abomination, trample under foot the 
conjured bread, and pour out the wine-blood like water. 
Let all equal rights he conceded even to those who are 
undermining the liberties of England, but not a single 
privilege: let it be remembered that they are the 
enemies of the commonwealth, and that our defences, 
•whatever may he our foe, are only weakened by their 
alliance. 

The one cure for Ritualism is Rationalism —by which 
I mean, not a set of results hut a method. The priests 
must he made to prove their priesthood; and gorgeous 
ceremonial must justify itself, or depart elsewhither. 
Perfectly free inquiry will cut up all this mischief 
by the roots, and nothing short of perfect freedom. 
Rationalism may lead us to Rome or to Geneva; but, 
at any rate, let us know where we are going and why 
we choose that road. Faith does not mean “ taking 
anything whatever for granted.” A man may believe 
whatever he likes, if he will look only to one set of facts, 
and he may give to his ignorant prejudice the name 
of faith. At the end of all inquiry, all observation 
and introspection, there will still remain great divine 
mysteries, facts which are the substance of all pheno¬ 
mena, truths which can be resolved into no simpler 
truths. But apart from these, we shall never get rid 
of pestilent superstitions and debasing lies until -we 
reverse the dictum of St. Augustine, and give ourselves 
the trouble “to know in order that w r e may believe .” 


ROMANISM, ANGLICANISM, 

AND 

EVANGELICALISM LOGICALLY IDENTICAL* 


Few modern religions “movements” are more bewilder¬ 
ing to a thoughtful observer than the manifestly earnest 
desire and effort to bring about a union between Boman, 
Greek, and Anglican “ Churches.” This endeavour has 
met with so overwhelming a ridicule on the one hand, 
and with so complete a demonstration of its hopelessness 
on the other hand, that we have almost lost sight of a 
further consideration, more important perhaps, and 
scarcely less obvious, than any other,—the fact that all 
this effort of speech and act is wholly superfluous. 
There is really nothing to unite, because there is no real 
and substantial difference. Each of these Churches is 
built upon the very same foundation, sets out from the 
very same hypotheses, and can never destroy either of 
the others without, in the very same act, committing 
suicide. Each of them is a bulwark to the rest; and 
the destruction of any one of the three could scarcely fail 
to be accompanied, or speedily followed, by the ruin of 
the other two. And the same is true of the system 
which calls itself “ Evangelical;” even though it seems 


* From the “ Fortnightly Beview,” June 15th, 1866. 






206 


ROMANISM, ANGLICANISM, AND 


now to exist almost solely for the sake of protesting against 
Romanism and Anglicanism. Perhaps the four great 
parties may not inaptly be compared to the Paul, the 
Apollos, the Cephas, and the Christ parties in the early 
Corinthian Church : and, like those early schisms, they 
all grow from the same root, and tend to the same 
results. This is, then, the proposition which it is the 
object of this essay to prove, omitting only the detailed 
and separate consideration of the Greek Church, as being 
in this country too little known to be cared for, and 
moreover sufficiently included in whatever may he proved 
of the Church of Rome. 

This identity of principle and foundation, in spite of 
the highly coloured superficial differences of the three 
great rivals who claim the faith and obedience of English 
Christians, is not obscurely indicated by the relation which 
they all alike sustain to the spirit of free inquiry; that 
spirit which, at the present moment, is actually working 
out a reformation far deeper, and likely to spread far wider, 
and last far longer, than that which was accomplished in 
England under the Tudors. For the reformation of the 
nineteenth century is real and not merely formal, in 
principles not merely in details, in the very root and 
foundation of religious doctrine and ecclesiastical polity. 
It is a protest, not against any particular sentence, but 
against the jurisdiction of the court; not against some 
special law, hut. against the legislature itself; not against 
individual dogmas, hut against the principle of any 
external authority by which dogma may he defined and 
enforced. It has done, or is doing, that for the intellect 
which Luther did for the conscience and the affections. 
The one vindicated for all men the right to approach the 
All-righteous even without the priest, and left for the 


EVANGELICALISM LOGICALLY IDENTICAL. 207 

minister of Christ no higher office than “ to declare and 
pronounce to God’s people the absolution and remission 
of their sins.” The other is vindicating for all men the 
right to come face to face with truth without the creeds; 
and leaves for the creeds no greater worth than to he the 
records of earnest inquiry and strong conviction, the 
landmarks of old beliefs. Thus the earlier Reformation 
is absorbed by the later. For the right of free search 
for truth, and of open discussion, must include the right 
to examine and test the value, not only of creeds, hut a 
fortiori, of priesthoods and rituals. And each of the three 
great English religious parties is keenly sensitive to the 
fact that the new reformation is fatal alike to Romanism, 
Anglicanism, and Evangelicalism. Therefore do Herod 
and Pontius Pilate for the occasion become friends, in 
order that they may defend their common fundamental 
principles. For in sight of the spirit of free inquiry 
and hold unfettered utterance, all the superficial differ¬ 
ences which separate Dr. McNeile from Dr. Pusey, and 
both from Dr. Manning, are, notwithstanding their gay 
and flaunting colours, mere geometrical surfaces, having 
length and breadth but no thickness. 

The superficial differences which distinguish Evan¬ 
gelicalism from Romanism are, of course, far more 
obtrusive than those by which Romanism is distinguished 
from Anglicanism. Indeed, it has been the constant 
cry of the Evangelicals, both within and without the 
Establishment, that there really does exist between 
Anglicanism and Romanism that very identity which it 
is the object of this paper to prove. This assertion, 
though in itself perfectly true, has often been made in a 
form which was not only insufferably impertinent and 
scandalously uncharitable, hut demonstrably false. For 


208 


ROMANISM, ANGLICANISM, AND 


the Evangelicals have been long in the habit of affirming 
not only that Anglicanism and Romanism are in principle 
identical, but that all Papists and Anglicans know and 
realize the identity. Hence, they have had no hesitation 
in charging the distinguished leaders of what is called 
the High Church party in the Establishment, with some 
of the very meanest vices with which human nature can be 
debased,—with the most contemptible moral cowardice, 
with the shabbiest trickery, with habitual perjury, and 
with such a use of the temporalities of the Established 
Church as can scarcely be distinguished even in law, 
and cannot at all be distinguished in foro conscientite, 
from positive robbery. And on the other hand they 
have not hesitated to charge the most influential of 
English Catholics, among whom are to be found some 
who have given this proof of their perfect integrity— 
namely, that they have willingly abandoned their 
Anglican dignities and emoluments for the sake of what 
they believe to be true—with conniving at, and even 
actively encouraging, that very baseness with which the 
High Church party in the Establishment is charged. 
Now these grave accusations are not only impudently 
false, but they are obviously and transparently false; 
the crimes of which these good men are accused are 
crimes by which nothing whatever could be gained, and 
which, moreover, have been distinctly repudiated and 
disproved over and over again. The High Church party 
in the Established Church has probably lost even in 
money, by its High Churcliism, very much more than it 
can possibly have gained; and, moreover, it has had to 
sacrifice what, to a man of high principle and brotherly 
love, is far more important than money, the goodwill of 
friends, and the reputation of an unsullied honour. On 


EVANGELICALISM LOGICALLY IDENTICAL. 


209 


the other hand, the Roman Catholic clergy either deny 
the identity between Romanism and Anglicanism, affirm¬ 
ing that the two are totally distinct, that no union can 
possibly take place between them ; or they affirm the 
identity in principle, and therefore regard the heresy and 
schism, the imperfect hierarchy, and dwarfed ceremonial 
of the English Church, as a preposterous absurdity. 

Even that which to a superficial observer seems most 
closely to identify the Roman and the Anglican Churches, 
and which is in fact a sort of instinctive endeavour to 
arrive at an identity, not only in premisses but in con¬ 
clusions, is understood at once by any intelligent Catholic 
to be a silly and even a mischievous delusion. Anglican 
ritualists vainly dream that they are permitted to wear 
their gay clothes, and to decorate and incense their altars, 
and to depart by all manner of ceremonial extravagances 
from the simple rubrics of the Book of Common Prayer, 
because the English people are beginning more com¬ 
pletely to understand, and more thoroughly to approve 
the things signified, of which all these elaborate 
ceremonies are the signs. This delusion, moreover, 
seems to be fostered by the undeniable fact that even 
among the strictest Puritan sects there is an increasing 
willingness to abandon the old baldness of their 
religious services, and the dreary ugliness of their old 
meeting-houses. But any Dissenter and any Catholic 
could tell a High Churchman in a single sentence how 
all this has come to pass : it has come to pass, not 
because Englishmen care more than they used to do 
about Ritualism, but because they have ceased to care 
about it at all. They regard all these ceremonial 
extravagances as a mere amusement, probably silly, 
frequently mischievous, but never of sufficient importance 


210 * 


ROMANISM, ANGLICANISM, AND 


to require more tlian a laugli or a sneer. If Dissenters 
imagined—as they certainly do not and have no need to 
imagine—that building their cl^els in the form of a 
cross, or placing their communion tables altar-wise in 
a chancel at the east end, meant anything; if, for in¬ 
stance, they imagined that a cruciform church implied 
that there was any mystic virtue in the form of a cross, 
or that a communion table set up against the east wall 
indicated that a special sacrifice was offered to God in 
the Holy Communion, every Gothic dissenting chapel 
would be torn down before a month had passed away. 

Nor are Catholic divines in even the slightest uncer¬ 
tainty about this same fact. 

“ I am perfectly aware,” says the Very Rev. Frederick Oakley, 
“that there has been a great development of Ritual in the 
Anglican Communion, and, what is far better, of self-denying 
charity in forms and ways peculiarly Catholic. The latter is a 
circumstance full of hope and promise, of the former I will speak 
hereafter. I know, also, especially from Dr. Pusey’s work, as far 
as the shortness of the period during which it has been in 
circulation can enable me to judge on the point, that there is a 
marvellous advance in the liberty of utterance on doctrinal sub¬ 
jects, and in the public toleration of what are called extreme 
opinions. But I cannot consent to regard this fact as creditable 
to the Anglican Church, merely because it happens in this instance 
to tell on our side. It is impossible to shut one’s eyes to the fact 
that the bishops allow Dr. Pusey and his friends to run out in one 
line because they wish to secure an indemnity for Rationalists, 
Liberals, and Evangelicals in another. . . . The start which has 
been made during the last few years in the direction of ceremonial 
religion, apart from any corresponding advances in sensitiveness 
to the necessity of an ordained provision for dogmatic teaching, 
appears to me to be not only not a gain, but a distinct and con¬ 
spicuous evil. It can have no other effect than to amuse with 
mere baubles a number of good men, who mistake the form for 
the substance. The rites and ceremonies of religion are not only 
most beautiful in themselves, but react powerfully upon its 


EVANGELICALISM LOGICALLY IDENTICAL. 


211 


truths, when they are the natural expressions of those truths, and 
are so understood by those who witness them; but they can no 
more teach religion of themselves, or be a substitute for it, than 
the emblazoned pall which covers the corpse of a monarch 
sustain the idea of a living royalty. I do not, indeed, deny that 
these mimicries of Catholic ceremonials may do us a service in 
familiarising the minds of Englishmen with a type of worship 
which had been totally obliterated; but this is a very different 
thing from saying they represent a reality where they are, or can 
be otherwise than most injurious to those who delight in them, 
by leading them to confound the outward show with the true 
spirit of Catholicity. But even this is scarcely their worst result. 
They cannot be practised without entailing a system of equivoca¬ 
tion and compromise highly prejudicial to the moral sense. The 
only legitimate interpreter of doubtful Rubrics is the Ordinary; 
and it certainly cannot be said either that the Rubrics on which 
these practices are founded are clearly in their favour, or that an 
explanation of their ambiguities is usually sought from the living 
authority. Hence a considerable body of the clergy are con¬ 
stantly seeking to hoodwink their bishops, who are themselves 
not very impatient of the process, and thus the Catholic principles 
of authority and obedience find their counterpart in a mutual 
relation of connivance and evasion.”* 

Tlie recent alliance between the Evangelical party 
and the High Church party is the more significant 
because the Evangelicals apparently believe that the 
High Church party in the Establishment are no better 
in creed, and are much worse in honesty, than the Papists 
themselves. On the other hand, the High Church 
party appear often to regard the Evangelicals, apart from 
the mystic effect of sacraments and orders, with the 
same sort of aversion which they seem to feel for Ana¬ 
baptists and Unitarians. And yet, in spite of these 
obtrusive, superficial differences, and strong antipathies, 


* “ Leading Topics of Dr. Pusey’s Recent Work reviewed,” 

pp. 7, 10, 11. 






212 


E0MANISM, ANGLICANISM, AND 


even Dr. Pusey and tlie Evangelicals have found it 
necessary to combine—not by any means against the 
devil and all his works, and the pomps and vanities of 
this wicked world, but against the Bishop of Natal and 
the authors of “ Essays and Reviews.” In other words, 
they combined against free inquiry, against the liberty 
to “ know, to utter, and to argue freely.” They com¬ 
bined by the mere instinct of self-preservation against 
what each and all of them knew to be a common foe 
—an enemy not simply to ritual extravagance, or pious 
fanaticism, or dogmatic absurdity ; but to the right and 
power of any individual, or any church, or any book, to 
determine for all time what should be the course of 
human duty and the bounds of human belief. To 
employ that mystic and inflated language which is so 
often used in a subject of this kind, it may be said that 
Evangelicalism, utterly panic-stricken by the increasing 
power of modern Rationalism, has fled for refuge even 
into the accursed Babylon itself, and become drunk with 
the cup of the apocalyptic harlot. It is this danger 
of liberty, this sense of shivering homelessness, that 
comes over the spirits of a certain sort of men wdien 
they find themselves beyond the shelter of authority, 
which drove Dr. Newman himself and many others with 
him into the Roman Communion. It is this very same 
danger which compelled Dr. Pusey to unite with the 
Evangelicals in defence of their common faith ; while all 
along he protests most earnestly that he has not shifted 
his ground, and that his likings and dislikings, his 
approvals and disapprovals, in respect to Evangelicalism, 
are exactly what they were before. 

“ What I ventured on one occasion to remark to Archdeacon 
Manning,” he says, “ was not that he used to join with those with 


EVANGELICALISM LOGICALLY IDENTICAL. 213 

whom I could not, but that he joined with them in a way at which 
I was surprised. In plain words he remained a member of, I 
think, two religious societies, some of whose principles I thought 
that we both held to be faulty. I have united with the Evan¬ 
gelicals now, as I did before, whenever they would join with me 
in defence of our common faith ; I have not united with them in 
any of those things which were not in accordance with my own 
principles. It was not anything new then, when in high places 
fundamental truths had been denied, I sought to unite with those, • 
some of whom had often spoken against me, but against whom I 
had never spoken. It was the pent-up longing of years. I had 
long felt that common zeal for faith could alone bring together 
those who were opposed ; I hoped that through that common zeal 
and love, inveterate prejudices, which hinder the reception of 
truth, would be dispelled. This, however, was a bright vista 
which lay bejmnd. The immediate object was to resist unitedly 
an inroad upon our common faith. This I had done before upon 
occasions less urgent.”* 

% 

These words help to prove, what it is quite plain that 
Dr. Pusey admits, the fundamental identity of Angli¬ 
canism and Evangelicalism. The Evangelicals do not 
believe quite so much as the Tractarians think they 
ought to believe ; they do not believe, for instance, in 
baptismal regeneration, or in the Real Presence ; they 
do not believe that the priest has any mystic and super¬ 
natural power to absolve from sin—and the Bishop of 
Natal is so far in the same predicament. What, then, 
is the difference between Dr. Colenso and Dr. McNeile ? 
The difference is not in detail but in principle. Dr. 
McNeile believes those fundamental doctrines from which 
the whole Catholic system legitimately follows; Dr. 
Colenso most unquestionably does not believe them : 
therefore the very unbelief of the one is more Anglican 
and more Roman than the very faith of the other. 


* “ Eirenicon,” pp. 5, 0. 




214 


ROMANISM, ANGLICANISM, AND 


Indeed Dr. McNeile miglit say in the words of Dr. Pnsey 
—words which, if they w T ere not sublime for their piety, 
would be pitiable for their imbecillity : — “I believe 
explicitly all which I know God to have revealed to His 
Church ; and implicitly (implicite) anything if He has 
revealed it, which I know not. In simple words I 
believe all which the Church believes.”* 

This is the negative defective side of Catholic 
orthodoxy, which Dr. Pusey is nevertheless hound to 
recognise, and whose alliance on occasions of great 
danger he may feel himself justified in seeking. There 
is also a positive excessive side, which in the same 
manner, and for the same reasons, he is also hound to 
acknowledge. In fact, admitting the logical identity of 
the three systems, admitting in other words that they 
all rest upon the same foundation, it may be said that 
Romanism is inconsistent, and Anglicanism more 
inconsistent, and Evangelicalism most inconsistent. 
Or, to express their relations by a kind of logical formula, 
the formula for Romanism might he this :—Every x is 
y, every y is z, therefore every x together with some a's 
and Vs is z; and the formula for Anglicanism might 
he :—Every x is y , every y is z, therefore some x's are 
£; and the formula for Evangelicalism might he :—Every 
x is y, every y is z, hut some x's are not z. It may, 
indeed, he doubted whether after all the inconsistency of 
the Roman logic is not in defect rather than in excess. 

At any rate there can he no doubt about the manner 
in which Dr. Pusey and those who think with him must 
regard the extravagances of Roman doctrine and ritual; 
they must necessarily regard them as mere matters of 


* “ Eirenicon,” p. 7. 





EVANGELICALISM LOGICALLY IDENTICAL. 


215 


detail, not at all of principle. Indeed, the only difficulty 
for any impartial observer of this great movement in 
favour of union, can merely be to discover how the Church 
of Borne, admitting the fundamental principles of 
Anglicanism and Evangelicalism to he true, can by any 
possibility have erred either by excess or by defect. 

For many a long year to come the “ Eirenicon ” of 
Dr. Pusey will he one of the best furnished armouries 
for those who wish and endeavour to bring about the 
destruction of the Church of Borne. It is scarcely too 
much to say that no book written within the present 
century has so completely demonstrated the hideous, 
not to say blasphemous extravagance of popular 
Bomanism, and therefore, by implication, the rottenness 
of the foundation upon which it rests. That part of 
the Boman system which is at the present time under¬ 
going the most rapid development is the cultus of the 
Virgin Mary ; but even this is regarded by Dr. Pusey 
only as a danger, a possible evil, which a good Catholic 
might tolerate in another so long as he was not himself 
required to submit to it. And yet it is not too much to 
say that the popular cultus of the Virgin Mary—which 
may or may not he authorized—is to the last degree 
blasphemous. The newly defined dogma of the Im¬ 
maculate Conception is in itself not half so absurd as 
the ordinary doctrine of original sin, but that dogma, or 
any other physical or metaphysical subtlety, can have a 
very slight effect upon practical piety. They may well 
admit the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, 
who believe that no human spirit is born in sin ; that 
sin, in fact, is personal and untransferable. But surely 
no Protestant need hesitate to denounce, with the utmost 
severity, such extravagances of Mariolatry as are quoted 


216 


ROMANISM, ANGLICANISM, AND 


in Dr. Pusey’s “Eirenicon,” when even Dr. Newman 
himself can only speak of them in such terms as 
these :— 

“ After sucli explanations,” he says, “ and with such authorities 
to clear my path, I put away from me, as you would wish, with¬ 
out any hesitation, as matters in which my heart and reason have 
no part, when taken in their literal and absolute sense, as any 
Protestant would naturally take them, and as the writers doubt¬ 
less did not .use them, such sentences and phrases as these:— 
‘ That the mercy of Mary is infinite ; that God has resigned into 
her hands His omnipotence; that (unconditionally) it is safer to 
seek her than her Son ; that the blessed Virgin is superior to 
God; that He is (simply) subject to her command; that our 
Lord is now of the same disposition as His Father towards 
sinners, viz., disposition to reject them, while Mary takes His 
place, as an advocate with Father and Son; that the saints are 
more ready to intercede with Jesus than with the Father ; that 
Mary is the only refuge of those with whom God is angry; that 
Mary alone can obtain a Protestant’s conversion ; that it would 
have sufficed for the salvation of men if our Lord had died, not 
to obey His Father, but to defer to the decrees of His mother; 
that she rivals our Lord in being God’s daughter, not by adoption, 
but by a kind of nature ; that Christ fulfilled the office of Saviour 
by imitating her virtues; that as the Incarnate God bore the 
image of His Father, so Fie bore the image of His mother; that 
redemption derived from Christ, indeed, its sufficiency, but from 
Mary its beauty and loveliness ; that as we are clothed with the 
merits of Christ, so we are clothed with the merits of Mary ; that 
as He is priest, in like manner is she priestess ; that His body 
and blood in the Eucharist are truly hers, and appertain to her ; 
that as He is present and received therein, so is she present and 
received therein; that priests are ministers as of Christ so of 
Mary; that elect souls are born of God and Mary; that the Holy 
Ghost brings into fruitfulness His actions by her, producing in 
her and by her, Jesus Christ in His members ; that the kingdom 
of God in our souls, as our Lord speaks, is really the kingdom of 
Mary in the soul—and she and the Holy Ghost produce in the 
soul extraordinary things—and when the Holy Ghost finds Mary 
in a soul He Hies there.’ 


EVANGELICALISM LOGICALLY IDENTICAL. 217 


“ Sentiments such as these I never knew of till I read your 
book ; nor, as I think, do the vast majority of English Catholics 
know them. They seem to me like a bad dream. I could not 
have conceived them to be said. I know not to what authority to 
go for them, to scriptures, or to the Fathers, or to the decrees of 
councils, or to the consent of schools, or to the tradition of the 
faithful, or to the Holy See, or to reason. They defy all loci 
theologici. There is nothing of them in the missal, in the Roman 
catechism, in the Roman Raccolta , in the Imitation of Christ, in 
Gother, Challoner, Milner, or Wiseman, as far as I am aware. 
They do but scare and confuse me. I should not be holier, more 
spiritual, more sure of perseverance, if I twisted my moral being 
into the reception of them ; I should be guilty of fulsome, frigid 
flattery towards the most upright and noble of God’s creatures 
if I professed them—and of stupid flattery too ; for it would be 
like the compliment of painting up a young and beautiful princess 
with the brow of a Plato and the muscle of an Achilles. And I 
should expect her to tell one of her people in waiting to turn me 
off her service without warning. Whether thus to feel be the 
scandalum jparvulorum in my case, or the scandal urn Pharisceorum, 
I leave others to decide ; but I will say plainly, that I would 
rather believe (which is impossible) that there is no God at all, 
than that Mary is greater than God. I have nothing to do with 
statements which can only be explained by being explained away. 
I do not, however, speak of these statements as found in their 
authors, for I know nothing of the originals, and cannot believe 
that they meant what you say ; but I take them as they lie in 
your pages. Were any of them the sayings of saints in ecstacy, I 
should know they had a good meaning ; still I should not repeat 
them myself; but I am looking at them, not as spoken by the 
tongues of angels, but according to that literal sense which they 
bear in the mouths of English men and English women. And, as 
spoken by man to man, in England, in the nineteenth century, 
I consider them as calculated to prejudice inquirers, to frighten 
the unlearned, to unsettle consciences, to provoke blasphemy, 
and to work the loss of souls.”* 

And yet the same Dr. Newman can write :— 

“ Now, as you know, it has been held from the first, and 


* “ A Letter to the Rev. E. B. Pusey, D.D., &c., by John Henry 

Newman, D.D.,” pp. 118—121. 




218 


ROMANISM, ANGLICANISM, AND 


defined from an early age, that Mary is the mother of God. She 
is not merely the mother of our Lord’s manhood, or of our Lord’s 
body, but she is to be considered the mother of the Word Him¬ 
self, the Word incarnate, God in the person of the Word, the 
second person of the All-glorious Trinity humbled Himself to 
become her son. ‘ Thou didst not shrink from the virgin’s womb,’ 
as the Church sings. He took the substance of His human flesh 
from her, and clothed in it He lay within her, and He bore it 
about with Him as a sort of badge and witness that He, through 
God, was hers. As time went on He ministered to her and obeyed 
her. He lived with her for thirty years in one house, with an 
uninterrupted intercourse, and with only the saintly Joseph to 
share it with Him. She was the witness of His growth, of His 
joys, of His sorrows, of His prayers ; she was blessed with His 
smile, with the touch of His hands, with the whispers of His 
affection, with the expression of His thoughts and His feelings 
for that length of time. Now, my brethren, what ought she to be, 
what is it becoming she should be, who was so favoured ? Such 
a question was once asked by a heathen king when he would 
place one of his subjects in a dignity becoming the relation in 
which he stood towards him. That subject had saved the king’s 
life, and what was to be done to him in return ? The king asked, 

‘ What shall be done to the man whom the king delighteth to 
honour ? ’ And he received the following answer:—‘ The man 
whom the king wisheth to honour ought to be clad in the king’s 
apparel, and to be mounted on the king’s saddle, and to receive 
the royal diadem on his head; and let the first among the king’s 
princes and presidents hold his horse, and let him walk through 
the streets of the city and say, “ Thus shall be honoured, whom 
the king hath a mind to honour.’ ” So stands the case with Mary ; 
she gave birth to the Creator, and what recompense shall be 
made her ? What shall be done to her who had this relationship 
to the Most High ? What shall be the fit accompaniment of one 
whom the Almighty has deigned not to make His servant, not 
His friend, not His intimate but His superior; the source of His 
sacred being, the nurse of His helpless infancy, the teacher of 
His opening years ? I answer as the king was answered, not hin g 
is too high for her to whom God owes His life ; no exuberance of 
grace, no excess of glory, but is becoming, but is to be expected 
there, where God has lodged Himself, whence God has issued. 
Let her ‘ be clad in the king’s apparel,’ that is, let the fulness of 



EVANGELICALISM LOGICALLY IDENTICAL. 219 

the Godhead so flow into her that she may be a figure of the 
incommunicable sanctity, and beauty, and glory of God Himself: 
that she may be the mirror of justice, the mystical rose, the tower of 
ivory, the house of gold, the morning star; let her receive the king's 
diadem upon her head as the queen of heaven, the mother of all 
living, the health of the weak, the refuge of sinners, the comforter 
of the afflicted, and* let the first among the king’s princes walk 
before her,’ let angels, and prophets, and apostles, and martyrs, 
and all saints kiss the hem of her garment, and rejoice under the 
shadow of her throne. Thus it is that King Solomon has risen 
to meet his mother, and bowed himself unto her, and caused a 
seat to be set for the king’s mother, and she sits on His right 
hand.”* 

It is surely not too much to say, that when these 
sentences are not blankly and incurably absurd, or 
redeemed by a pious intention, they are unconsciously 
more blasphemous than all the blasphemies of “infidels” 
put together. And yet this is nearer to Anglicanism, 
and nearer to Evangelicalism, than Colenso’s “Introduc¬ 
tion to the Pentateuch.” And, moreover, though the 
Evangelical leaders have the utmost suspicion of Dr. 
Pusey, though they have been protesting against him 
for years, and are protesting against him still, though 
they think him spiritually at one with the Roman Church 
in those very particulars which constitute her the 
Apocalyptic Babylon, yet their instincts of self-preserva¬ 
tion compelled them to avail themselves of his ready and 
powerful help in their hopeless conflict with the secular 
element in the Establishment. What are even his 
Romeward tendencies and Romish doctrines, the fact 
that he has given his name to that very movement in 
the Church which the Evangelicals so bitterly resent, 


* “ Discourses to Mixed Congregations,” quoted in Canon Oakley’s 

Pamphlet, pp. 43—45. 



220 ROMANISM, ANGLICANISM, AND 

compared with the enormous dangers of that open 
criticism, that exhaustive inquiry, that free utterance 
which is destroying the very foundations of dogmatic 
orthodoxy ? 

That one foundation which Evangelicals, Anglicans, 
and Romanists alike require, is infallible dogma , and 
some available guardian or depository of infallible dogma. 
This is admitted by Dr. Pusey in his scornful caricature 
of Freethinkers, in the preface to his “ Prophet Daniel.” 
He derides their diversities and uncertainties, just as 
Bossuet derided the variations of Protestantism. He 
insists that there shall be one meaning of the word 
“eternal,” authorized and unalterable; one authorized 
and infallible doctrine of atonement; one unchangeable 
dogma of inspiration; one authoritative definition of the 
nature and value of the Bible. Without this dogmatic 
certainty, he asks, “How can there be any union?” 
It was this “ fascinating language,” as Dr. McNeile 
assures us, which charmed the Evangelicals. “ Such 
exclusive adherence to definite truth came like trumpet 
sounds from the Professor’s chair, stirring the hearts of 
the truly Evangelical members of the Church of England. 
They unfeignedly rejoiced, willing and more than willing 
to forgive the past and forget all complicity with Tract 
Christianity; all the ambiguity, not to say heterodoxy, 
which caused the University to silence for a time her 
own distinguished son; and to hail the Professor as a 
champion, not only furnished with weapons beyond any 
of his contemporaries, but now determined to wield them 
in defence of definite truth, the ‘ sole meaning ’ of plain 
and popular language.” * 

* “ Fidelity and Unfiy. A Letter, &c.” .By the Rev. H. 

McNeile, D.D. 



EVANGELICALISM LOGICALLY IDENTICAL. 


221 


Dr. Pusey sneers at tlie differing Freethinkers, and 
Dr. Manning sneers at the differing Anglicans. Where 
is the infallible dogma of the English Church ? And 
without infallible dogma what possible assurance have 
we that we are not believing and propagating lies, and 
fraternising with those whom God hath cursed ? This 
then is the great foundation—dogmatic orthodoxy; 
which party really has it ? The answer to this question 
will indicate what we mean by the logical identity of 
Romanism, Anglicanism, and Evangelicalism, and by 
their comparative inconsistencies. It will also indicate 
the immeasurable importance of that great Reformation 
which, at this very hour, is turning the whole world of 
religion upside down. 

If there be any such thing as infallible doctrine at 
all, its origin must surely be sought for in those 
promises which Christ gave to His disciples, and which 
are believed by all the three great parties to have been 
partly or completely fulfilled on the Day of Pentecost. 
When the apostles were in the “upper room,” “con¬ 
tinuing with one accord in prayer and supplication with 
the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his 
brethren,” then we are told that the Holy Ghost, 
according to the promise of the Saviour, revealed to 
them explicitly what was needed for the present time, 
and implicitly “ the whole truth.” Moreover, that first 
revelation was but an earnest of good things to come. 
To unroll that truth which is enfolded in a few facts 
and implied in a few leading dogmas, is almost as 
difficult, if not even more difficult, than to discover the 
truth itself. Plow to secure a complete development 
without corruption ; how to apply the truth that is in 
Jesus to all the varying circumstances and necessities of 


222 


ROMANISM, ANGLICANISM, AND 


the Jewish and heathen world, and of that new world of 
which Christ’s advent w T as the beginning—this was a 
problem more difficult of solution than almost any 
other. The difficulty of its solution has, in fact, been 
demonstrated by the fact that it has never yet been 
solved; what a Romanist considers a legitimate and 
even necessary development of the original truth, the 
Anglican considers an extravagance, and the Evangelical 
a corruption. And yet they all alike believe both in the 
original promise of the gift of the Holy Ghost, and in 
the power of prayer. Indeed, it may truly be affirmed 
that the extremest Evangelicals, even in the narrowest 
of dissenting sects, hold this belief as firmly as the 
Romanists themselves. Nothing but a familiar ac¬ 
quaintance with the extravagance of sectarianism can 
enable any one to understand in what unexpected ways 
religious extremes meet. Dirty little pieces of paper, 
with announcements, of which the following is a fair 
sample, may often be met with among what ma} T be 
called the Evangelical Bohemians :— 

“YES, OUR KING STILL DEIGNS! 

Please pay Him a visit 

Next Tuesday, at Seven o’clock, October 10th, 1865, 

at his house, 

The Welch Chapel, Eldon Street, Finsbury. 

He will be at home, and His servants with Him, Mr. J. W. 
Dichardson and Chadwick, Calvinistic Ministers ; and Mr. G. 
Shaw, Allberry, Taylor, Loader, Revivalists, and others, who 
will kneel at His feet* and sing praises, and pray, and pay homage 
to Him, and thank Him for giving them liberty. 

Mr. R. will preach the words He shall say unto them, on 
behalf of His fund and cause. Long reign our King, whose name 
is Jesus ! Come then and see Him ! You are welcome. 


[Rymer, Printer, New Road, E.” 


EVANGELICALISM LOGICALLY IDENTICAL. 


223 


When vulgar fanaticism, or that blind credulity which is 
supposed to become a virtue when it receives the name 
of faith, takes such a form as this, it is simply laughed 
at by all educated people; and yet it differs in no 
essential particular from the pompous pretensions of the 
Roman hierarchy or the equally pompous pretensions of 
that anile and powerless assembly the convocation of 
Anglican clergy. They all alike, with more or less of 
inward belief, rely upon the efficacy of prayer, the pro¬ 
mise of the Holy Ghost, and the infallible truth of 
whatever the Holy Ghost may teach. “ It seemed good 
to the Holy Ghost and to us,” is an ecclesiastical 
formula that we find even in the New Testament itself; 
and if that formula means anything, it is scarcely too 
much to say that it means everything. If the Holy 
Ghost can be summoned on every fresh occasion by 
earnest prayer, there is no reason why the teaching of 
Messrs. Richardson and Chadwick, Calvinistic ministers, 
and Messrs. Shaw, Allberry, Taylor, Loader, Revivalists, 
should not be as true and as valuable as the teaching of 
the Pope himself. 

The Romanists unquestionably believe, and have for 
centuries acted upon the belief, that the promise of 
Christ was true, that it was fulfilled on the Hay of 
Pentecost, and that it has been refulfilled again and 
again, as often as occasion has arisen. They believe, for 
instance, that it was fulfilled at the Council of Nice; 
that it was fulfilled again at the Council of Ephesus : 
that it was fulfilled again at the Council of Trent; that 
it was fulfilled again in the definition of the dogma of 
the Immaculate Conception; and that it is fulfilled 
passively as it were, and negatively, throughout the 
Roman obedience. This is, of course, perfectly con- 


224 ROMANISM, ANGLICANISM, AND 

sistent, and it seems altogether impossible to fix upon 
any one occasion when this faith, supposing it to have 
been reasonable in the beginning, became unreasonable 
and fruitless. The Church met for instance to deter¬ 
mine the conditions upon which the Gentiles should be 
received into the fellowship of Christ’s religion. It 
cannot be doubted that, according to their custom, they 
had prayed; there was also, as we learn from the 
narrative itself, considerable discussion. But the 
apostles and elders unquestionably believed that the 
promise of Christ would be again fulfilled, and that in 
this, their first great difficulty, they would not only be 
preserved from error, but led into truth. It was, indeed, 
a matter of the gravest importance, amounting almost to 
a determination of what was the essence of the Christian 
religion and the true foundation of the Christian Church. 
The great Gentile world was really the world ; if that 
had been excluded from the Church the exclusion would 
have been equivalent to a denial of “ the redemption of 
the world by our Lord Jesus Christ.” The decision at 
which the apostles and elders arrived, not only consti¬ 
tutes a crisis in Church history, but would have been 
absurd, at least in their own judgment, if it had not been 
founded upon some Divine authority. Therefore they 
wrote after this manner :—“ The apostles and elders 
and brethren send greeting unto the brethren which are 
of the Gentiles in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia. For¬ 
asmuch as we have heard, that certain which went out 
from us have troubled you with words, subverting your 
souls, saying, Ye must be circumcised, and keep the law : 
to whom we gave no such commandment: it seemeth 
good to us, being assembled with one accord, to send 
chosen men unto you with our beloved Barnabas and 


EVANGELICALISM LOGICALLY IDENTICAL. 


225 


Paul, men that have hazarded their lives for the name of 
our Lord Jesus Christ. We have sent therefore Judas 
and Silas, who shall also tell you the same things by 
mouth. For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to 
us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these 
necessary things; that ye abstain from meats offered to 
idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and 
from fornication : from which if ye keep yourselves, ye 
shall do well. Fare ye well.” 

This decree, if such it must be called, was at once 
decisive and provisional. It decided what was of primary 
importance, that the blessings of God, and, above all, re¬ 
pentance and faith, and those gifts which were supposed 
to be the special tokens of the favour of the Holy Ghost, 
were by no means confined to the Jewish people. On 
the other hand it was provisional, inasmuch as it was on 
the face of it a condescension to the weaknesses, not to 
say the prejudices, of converts from Judaism ; and has, in 
fact, long since become obsolete. Whether or not a 
Christian shall eat blood, depends now not upon his con¬ 
science, but upon his stomach and palate ; while it seems 
impossible to pretend that even the observance of the 
first day of the week has any apostolical authority 
approaching in distinctness or solemnity to this decree, 
which determined the conditions of communion for 
Gentile believers. 

Again, there arose controversies about the person of 
Christ; in these controversies, also, the very essence of 
Christianity was called in question. And if the promise 
of the Holy Ghost to the Church was worth anything at 
all, the settlement of all doubts as to the relation of 
Christ to the Eternal God, and to the human race, was 
unquestionably a fitting occasion for its fulfilment. 

Q 


226 


ROMANISM, ANGLICANISM, AND 


Therefore the Church, duly represented by those who 
were its appointed spiritual leaders and instructors, did 
meet together invoking the presence and help of the Holy 
Ghost. The result of this assembly, this solemn prayer 
and invocation of the Divine Teacher of all truth, may he 
found, partly at least, in the Nicene Creed. But this, 
of course, is not all; the declaration of the truth was in 
almost every case accompanied by an anathema upon 
error. The anathema was as truly the work of the Holy 
Ghost as the definition of the orthodox doctrine itself. 
And this only amounts to saying not only that everything 
the Roman Church believes is infallibly true, hut also 
that everything the Roman Church denies is certainly 
false. The Holy Ghost not only guided the apostles 
and their successors into the whole truth, hut also deter¬ 
mined of whom the Church should consist, so that it is 
absolutely vain to urge that there has always been a 
protest against those doctrines which are offensive even 
to Anglicans, and far more offensive still to Evangelicals. 

The so-called Council of Ephesus, in which it w T as 
determined that the Virgin Mary should be called the 
“Mother of God,” and not simply Mother of Christ, 
may be regarded as a kind of crucial instance of the truth 
or falseness of the fundamental principle upon which 
Romanism, Anglicanism, and Evangelicalism are alike 
founded. To the devout Catholic, that assembly may no 
doubt appear a gathering of saints; to the ordinary lay 
student of history it can seem nothing better than a dis¬ 
orderly rabble of unprincipled fanatics. The proceedings 
of the council were in direct opposition to the command 
of the emperor. Cyril and his party with indecent haste 
anticipated the arrival of those ecclesiastics who were 
supposed to be favourable to Nestorius, though they were 


EVANGELICALISM LOGICALLY IDENTICAL. 


227 


known to be on their way to the council, and to he the re¬ 
presentatives of a certain school of theology, in the 
absence of whom no fair and honest decision could 
possibly be arrived at. But still this rabble of fanatics, 
called the Council of Ephesus, assembled in the name of 
the Holy Ghost, invoked His presence, and in prayer 
besought His assistance. And what shall Dr. McNeile 
say ? If the prayer were not efficacious, why pray at 
all ? Many of our prayers are random and unwise, but 
a prayer that the whole Church of Christ may be pro¬ 
tected from fatal error is a prayer about the wisdom of 
which it is impossible to have a doubt. If such a prayer 
were not in the name of Christ, and according to the will 
of God, it is impossible to imagine in what circumstances 
a fitting prayer can be offered. Moreover, according to 
the hypothesis, the Holy Ghost had long ago deter¬ 
mined in a succession of councils and synods who were 
the fitting persons to constitute a council, to be the true 
representatives of the true Church. But, on the other 
hand, if the prayer for the presence and help of the 
Holy Ghost were effectual, we have the clearest divine 
sanction of that very foundation upon which the whole 
cultus of the Virgin Mary rests. If she be indeed the 
Mother of God it is quite impossible to call her by any 
name which shall be more significant of everything by 
which the conscience of a Protestant is shocked'; indeed, 
to any one who can perceive that this name is not 
utterly and immeasurably absurd no extravagances of 
superstition can be even so much as difficult. 

The Evangelicals, indeed, imagine that they have a 
kind of protection in the canonical writings of the New 
Testament; indeed, one might almost fancy, from the 
letter which Dr. Pusey’s “ Eirenicon ” has brought forth 

Q2 


228 


ROMANISM, ANGLICANISM, AND 


from the pen of Dr. McNeile, that the Evangelicals 
imagine that the first work of the Holy Spirit was not to 
found a Church, but to dictate a Bible. No fancy, of 
course, can he more completely absurd ; for not only the 
life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, but the 
institution of the sacraments, the appointment of 
bishops and presbyters and deacons, the decision about 
the admission of the Gentiles to the Christian com¬ 
munion, and even the rise of some of the earliest 
heresies, had all taken place before a line of the New 
Testament was written. Not that the fact is of any grave 
significance, for the same Holy Ghost who appointed the 
writers and afterwards insured the canonical authority of 
the New Testament hooks had by no means exhausted 
His resources even in so great an effort. He could still, 
according to the promise of Christ, meet the living 
Church on every fresh occasion of danger or need—nay, 
rather, He would abide with the Church for ever—un¬ 
folding more and more the truth that was enfolded in the 
earliest facts and doctrines of Christianity, providing for 
its due expression in the ceremonial of the Church, and 
securing for it a hearty response in the affectionate devo¬ 
tions of the faithful. In a word, where are w r e to stop ? 
The Holy Ghost determined what was true, and excluded 
what was false at every step of the progress, from the day 
of Pentecost to the de^nition of the Immaculate Concep¬ 
tion. Moreover, He blessed those who were orthodox, and 
He excommunicated those who w T ere heretical, through 
the whole of that long period. Not only, therefore, did 
He excommunicate Arians and Nestorians and Pelagians, 
hut He excommunicated the Greeks at the time of the 
great schism, and the Anglicans in the reign of the 
Tudors. And He (the Holy Ghost) having never departed 


EVANGELICALISM LOGICALLY IDENTICAL. 


229 


from that Church, for whose guidance He was promised 
by Jesus Christ, does at this moment declare that Dr. 
Pusey and Dr. McNeile, and all their followers, are in 
mortal sin and in the deepest danger of damnation. 
Will, then, these divines inform us at what precise 
period in the history of the Church the prayer of the 
faithful, or the promise of the Redeemer, or the power 
of the Paraclete, became useless and vain ? 

There is only one point at which it could be plausibly 
contended that the presence of the living Spirit was 
withdrawn, or that the object and effect of His presence 
w T ere wholly changed ; and that point is the completion 
of the New Testament Canon. But not to mention the 
intrinsic absurdity of such a theory, not one of the three 
great religious parties so much as pretends to maintain 
it. The New Testament is not the work exclusively of 
apostles; nor would the knowledge of divine truth for¬ 
sake the inspired when they had committed it to writing; 
nor would it become incapable of different though equi¬ 
valent modes of expression. There would, therefore, be 
a large body of oral teaching handed down by tradition, 
parallel to the New Testament, of quite equal or rather 
of the very same authority, and providing an “ analogy 
of faith,” according to which the New Testament would 
be certainly interpreted. Indeed, the Epistles directly 
refer to such oral explanation, and affirm their own im¬ 
perfection without it. “ The rest will I set in order 
when 1 come .” “All my state shall Tychicus declare 
unto you.” The sternness of the First Epistle to the 
Corinthians is somewhat softened in the Second; and 
the not unnatural mistake about the coming of the Lord 
which the First Epistle to the Thessalonians seems to 
have produced, the second was written (partly at least) to 


230 ROMANISM, ANGLICANISM, AND 

remove. Indeed it would have been clearly ridiculous 
for an apostle to pretend to inspiration and infallibility 
in a letter , while be was not sufficiently inspired to 
correct, or modify, or improve, or enlarge what be him¬ 
self bad written. In other words, the promised Paraclete 
was present with the church, so far as He was present 
at all, before the composition of the New Testament 
hooks, and during the period of their composition, and 
afterwards. He led the Church into the truth as to the 
canon itself, and over and over again, as to the true in¬ 
terpretation of the sacred scriptures. The Bible, and 
the Bible alone, neither is, nor ever has been the religion 
even of Protestants. The Bible itself is constructed by 
the Church, and interpreted according to the creeds. 

Moreover, the Evangelicals themselves profess to 
believe even still the efficacy of prayer, and the presence 
and power of the Holy Ghost; profess to believe it, for 
the belief is not realized. The sure proof that it is un¬ 
realized is this, that it is never with any approach to a 
genuine consistency acted upon. The Romanist does 
really believe in the perpetual fulfilment of Christ’s 
promise of the Spirit, “ to lead into the whole truth 
and therefore without a shadow of hesitation he affirms 
the divine infallibility of even the newest and last of 
the decisions of the Church. But when an Evangelical 
clergyman prays for the Spirit, nothing whatever comes 
of it —except indeed that strange mixture of arrogance 
and uncertainty which has long been the laughing-stock 
alike of Papist and Freethinker. He cannot even 
pretend himself to show wliat effect his prayer has 
actually produced ; and that “ something ” which cannot 
he ascertained or defined or exhibited, is surely little 
better than nothing. In recent theological contro- 


EVANGELICALISM LOGICALLY IDENTICAL. 231 

versies, there has been no end of unctuous praying. 
Bishop Colenso, for instance, has been prayed for, 
prayed at, prayed against, lubricated and bespattered by 
prayer, without a vestige of result, beyond an increase of 
hypocrisy and petty spite. He lias not retracted one of 
bis “ errors ; ” and, what is much more to the point, bis 
Anglican and Evangelical opponents are not in a position 
to meet bis false teaching and refute it by the only 
satisfactory refutation—the truth which it contradicts. 
They meet together in synods, and convocations, and 
Church congresses; they pray and discuss ; the Holy 
Ghost is with them ; they pass resolutions, pronounce 
anathemas, devise new formularies which are sent over 
all England for due signature; and yet they dare not 
affirm that the whole or any part of these proceedings is 
the direct and indubitable result of the presence and 
teaching of the promised Paraclete. Pie is there with 
them, hut nobody is perfectly sure of it; He speaks, but 
nobody hears distinctly what He says; and when 
Anglicanism or Evangelicalism has arrived at a certain 
conclusion, it dare not affirm that of that specific con¬ 
clusion the Holy Ghost is the author. And yet this is 
the very thing that both parties desire and admit to be 
necessary—an external authority which shall answer 
every doubt and solve every difficulty. Why not enter 
at once the Holy Church, which now as ever, in Trent or 
Borne as in Jerusalem, in the nineteenth century as in 
the first, will still say : “It seemed good to the Holy 
Ghost, and to us,”—and mean it. 

The identity of Bomanism and even Evangelicalism is 
curiously enough indicated even in separate doctrines— 
they are at one in what is fundamental, they differ only 
superficially, and in the consistency of their conclusions. 


232 


ROMANISM, ANGLICANISM, AND 


Tlie doctrine of original sin, as held alike by Evangelicals 
and Romanists, is so intimately connected with the 
doctrine of baptismal regeneration, that it is hard, if not 
impossible, to separate them. At any rate, the Romanist, 
when he differs from the Evangelical, has immeasurably 
the best, not only of the argument, but of the (hypotheti¬ 
cal) resulting position. An imaginary curse may well be 
removed by an imaginary absolution or purification, but 
it is obviously better to get it removed. Moreover, the 
doctrine of original sin seems to require some such 
correction as the immaculate conception of the Virgin 
Mary; which in return gives a new and greater value to 
the victim who was to be offered up as a propitiatory 
sacrifice to the righteousness of God. In fact, Romanism 
clearly knows what it is about, sets out from a certain 
point, and moves on to a clearjy perceived end. Evan¬ 
gelicalism is forgetful, doubtful, half-believing, denying 
in its conclusion what it has already affirmed in its 
premisses, or denying in its doctrinal articles wdiat it is 
continually affirming in its ritual. It has a practice of 
prayer, and a theory of its efficac}"; but it is never able 
to be sure that in a given instance prayer has really been 
efficacious. It “believes in the Holy Ghost,” but can 
never utter so much as a single sentence wffiicli it dare 
attribute to His dictation. It acknowledges a “Holy 
Catholic Church,” but it cannot say where it is nor how it 
may be recognised. Therefore Evangelicalism is utterly 
powerless in the presence of scepticism ; when even 
Rome is constantly receiving w r eary hearts to her motherly 
breast, and rocking them to a quiet sleep. Piety, devout 
feeling, the simple worship of God, are to a large extent, 
and at a certain stage of mental development, independent 
of intellectual inquiry or formal dogmatic statement, and 


EVANGELICALISM LOGICALLY IDENTICAL. 238 

therefore may tliey often he found in rich and fragrant 
beauty among the Evangelical party. But for all strong 
thinkers, who have been compelled to come face to face 
with the profound religious problems of our own day, 
Evangelicalism is for ever impossible. For such there can 
he only one alternative—a complete and exhaustive external 
authority or perfect freedom, Romanism or Rationalism. 

And it is the special work of the reformation of the 
nineteenth century to bring us to this issue. The battles 
of the sects are a painful and yet a ludicrous waste of 
intellectual and spiritual force. The fighters strike 
hard, but it is a matter of complete uncertainty and 
comparative indifference upon what head the blows will 
fall. Whether a doctrine be orthodox, and even whether 
it be useful, is an inquiry full of interest for certain 
minds ; but all such inquiries are as nothing in the face 
of the far deeper inquiry, “ Js it true ? ” The question for 
our own age is not, “ What is ‘orthodox*?” hut, “ What 
ought to be ‘ orthodox’?” And in an attempt to solve 
this problem it is impossible not to ask whether the very 
notion of “ orthodoxy ” is not an obsolete impertinence. 

It is by no means necessary to deny, much less is it 
the object of this essay to deny, the promise of Christ 
upon which the Church is supposed to rest, or the fulfil¬ 
ment of that promise. Surely it is not unreasonable to 
affirm that in Christendom religious doctrine is far purer 
and far steadier than anywhere else; and this may, not 
unfairly, to say the least, be accounted for by the advent 
of Christ and the wonderful spiritual impulse that 
accompanied and followed His advent. But most cer¬ 
tainly the extravagances of Romanism can be met only 
by a denial that the presence of God in the world implies 
necessarily the infallibility of any man or of any set of 


234 


ROMANISM, ANGLICANISM, AND 


men in any age. It did not imply the infallibility of 
the apostles, who moreover can he shown to have been 
fallible. It did not preserve from all possibility of error 
even the little company in the upper room—the disciples 
who had witnessed the ascension, “ with the women, 
and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brethren.” It 
did not invert the laws of nature or the course of human 
development. As the perfect man, so the perfect church 
is in the future, not in the past; and in the Acts of the 
Apostles, we can scarcely guess what the building will be, 
because of the scaffolding. But this is where we must 
“draw the line —if the apostles as apostles were in¬ 
capable of error, and if the promise of the Comforter 
guaranteed an external authority and an infallible dogma 
for any age, then we can have no reason to deny the 
“Immaculate Conception,” or to refuse to take our part 
in the cultus of the Virgin Mary. 

Nor need this absence of external authority and infal¬ 
lible dogma in the least degree surprise us ; it is 
precisely the customary method of His government, who 
has ordered that in every kind and region of life, 
material and spiritual, the hand of the diligent only 
shall make rich. God, we may be sure, has been never 
for a moment absent from His own creatures ; and the 
•whole universe is as a roll of revelation, written within 
and without. But there is no infallible guidance to the 
laws of nature ; though not comfort only, but morality 
and religion, so much depend upon the knowledge of 
them. Even within the Bible itself, and the history it 
records, again and again 

“ The old order cliangeth, giving place to new, 

And God fulfils Himself in many ways, 

Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.” 


EVANGELICALISM LOGICALLY IDENTICAL. 235 

Even in Judaism itself tlie prophets were continually 
breaking to pieces the externals both of doctrine and 
ritual, when they were so hardening round human spirits 
as to shut out from them the fresh air of heaven, and to 
rob them of the freedom in which alone there was life ; 
and so far as the new reformation is negative it denies 
only that the living Spirit will imprison Himself in a 
single set of dogmas or society of men, or that “the 
whole truth can he exhausted in a single age.” 

It has been of the greatest service to this modern 
movement of free thought that some of its most distin¬ 
guished and influential leaders are to be found among 
the ordained clergy of the Established Church. This 
fact has obtained at least a hearing, and often a favour¬ 
able hearing, for what otherwise would have been passed 
by with contemptuous neglect. Moreover, it has 
strengthened the public confidence that the great 
religious movement of the present century is a reforma¬ 
tion, and not an anarchy. Yet even this good is by no 
means unmixed with evil; and above all it has brought 
an undeserved suspicion of insincerity both upon the 
movement itself and upon those illustrious churchmen 
who are assuredly among its best helpers. They have 
given abundant proof of their integrity to satisfy every 
mind not incapable of candour; and yet it cannot he 
denied that their outward connection with the Anglican 
Church has been to many minds wholly inexplicable. 
The dogmas of the Establishment—the Thirty-nine 
Articles, the Homilies, the Athanasian Creed, and the 
like—can scarcely be defended on the ground that they 
are the truth and nothing hut the truth; much less on 
the ground that they are the whole truth. Nor can the 
leaders of the Broad Church party accept them purely and 


236 ROMANISM, ANGLICANISM, ETC. 

simply on authority; inasmuch as the Reformation, in 
which they have so conspicuous a share, involves the 
repudiation of a merely external authority. Hence it 
has come to pass that some of the noblest and most 
transparently honest clergymen of this or any age have 
been exposed, with just the faintest and most deceptive 
shadow of justice, to the charge of trickery and mercenari¬ 
ness. Nevertheless, it is as dishonest to go on faster 
than our convictions as it is to loiter behind them ; and 
there can be no doubt that free inquiry is the cure not 
only of ignorance and error, but of transitory incon¬ 
sistencies. But it is more and more becoming plain 
that Romanism is the only perfectly consistent and 
trustworthy form of religion by authority; and that the 
only other religion possible for a careful reasoner is the 
religion of conscience and reason and spirit. 





RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 


It is extremely difficult for well-educated men to under¬ 
stand that abhorrence of Rationalism, which undoubtedly 
prevails among religious people in this country. So 
much even of the popular theology is based upon 
Rationalism, and must rapidly perish if removed from 
that foundation, that to discourage Rationalism seems 
little short of the suicide of “orthodoxy.” Puritanism 
as distinguished from Anglicanism is essentially ration¬ 
alistic ; and so is Anglicanism as distinguished from 
Popery. And yet in the English Episcopal Church, 
the ecclesiastical dignitaries are constantly doing their 
utmost to return to that authority, whose first free 
utterance would anathematize themselves; and the 
Puritans, who have far outstript the Anglicans in their 
rejection of tradition, are so perplexed by the confusion 
and utter uncertainty which are among the first-fruits of 
liberty, that they are for ever eager to return to that 
house of bondage which, after all, had more rest than 
the first rough pilgrimage of freedom. 

Such books as Mr. Lecky’s,f while they encourage and 

* From the “ Journal of Sacred Literature,” October, 1865. 

f “ History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Ration¬ 
alism in Europe. By W. E. A. Lecky, M.A.” Longman and Co., 
1865. Alterations in the second edition are so exceedingly few, 
that I have not thought it necessary to correct the references in 
tliis essay; which are, therefore, always made to the first edition. 





238 


RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 


brace all genuine lovers of freedom and truth, can by no 
means be received as giving a faithful picture of the 
average intellectual condition of our own age. Indeed, 
they are intended rather to indicate what are the 
dominant tendencies, the great principles by which the 
leading spirits of the time are governed, and the high 
objects at which they are habitually aiming. Every 
unbiassed reader of Mr. Lecky’s book must be perfectly 
certain that Eationalism is triumphant* that it has given 
the death-blow to ignorance and superstition, and that 
what seem to be reactions in favour of exploded errors 
and senseless mummeries, are but the dying agonies of 
a monster evil. It is strange, indeed, that in the 
Protestant Church accomplished scholars and devout 
saints should still write pamphlets to urge upon the 
faithful the duty of adoring the Blessed Sacrament,— 
the duty, in other words, of worshipping a little 
fragment of bread : but no learning and no sanctity will 
ever bring back in this country the doctrine of transub- 
stantiation. Convocations of the clergy may meet as 
often as they can get leave, to condemn the books that 
they cannot answer, and to curse the men who are 
invested with the same high privileges, and surrounded 
by the same ecclesiastical sanctions as themselves ; but 
the English nation will never again form its opinion, 
either of man or book, by the dictation of any convo¬ 
cation of clergymen. Men begin to perceive that the 
power of authority is often nearest to contempt when it 
is most boastful; and they simply laugh, where, but a 
few generations ago, they would have trembled and died. 
The Pope, for instance, within these last few years, 
hurls anathemas at all civilised Europe, excommunicates 
princes, lays whole kingdoms under an interdict, and 


RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 


239 


promulgates new absurdities as necessary doctrines of 
Christendom, in the name of the Holy Ghost. But 
everybody can see plainly enough that he is seated on 
no rock, against which the gates of hell cannot prevail; 
hut only upon a crazy, broken-legged stool, propped up 
by French bayonets ; and that his incredible dogmas 
and preposterous policy have not half as much of the 
wisdom of the Holy Ghost as the honest cobbling of 
shoes. We read some literary organ of ultramontanism, 
—for even the very spirit of darkness must light his 
little literary candle, that people may know whereabouts 
he is,—and we might almost imagine ourselves living 
in the middle ages. Or again, we read the literary organs 
of some of the narrower sects and parties in the religious 
world—the imbecile and fetid rubbish, for instance, of 
The Record —and we might imagine that since the 
Reformation, England had simply fallen back again into 
chaos; that there was no longer any attempt to found 
doctrines upon reason and fact, but only upon the bare 
assertion of any man who has the brassiest voice, and 
the most unblushing effrontery. Yet all these creatures, 
Popes and Convocations, Tablets and Records, are only 
writhing in the firm grasp of Rationalism; that great 
slayer of monsters, which goes forth over all Europe, 
and over all the world, conquering and to conquer. 

Mr. Lecky’s book then is very reassuring to everybody 
who is engaged on the side of freedom, in the great 
battle against falsehood and superstition, and intellectual 
thraldom; and assuredly all such soldiers need to be 
reassured. For the vast majority of British Christians 
are not only irrational, but bitterly resent every effort to 
support even their own belief by some foundation of 
reason. They think that if some party can give them a 


240 


RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 


reason for tlieir faith, some other party may be able to 
give them a reason against their faith. Reason, there¬ 
fore, seems to them to be a two-edged sword, of 
wonderful and admirable sharpness, perfectly fitted for 
hewing Agag in pieces before the Lord ; but unfortu¬ 
nately without a hilt, so that even Samuel must cut his 
own hands while slaying the Lord’s enemies. They do 
not perceive that they who worship God must worship 
Him in spirit and in truth ; and therefore they worship 
Him with ceremonies and make-believes, and the vain 
repetition of unintelligible jargon. When God bids 
them discover what kind of sacrifice would please 
Him, and offer that to Him, when they have heart 
and love enough to be glad to do it, they reject 
all such counsel as utterly useless and visionary ; 
and instead of such a sacrifice they pile up on 
God’s altar heaps of lifeless victims, as if He would 
“ drink bulls’ blood, and eat the flesh of goats,” or were 
a kind of poor celestial bankrupt, in need of vast 
contributions of guineas. When God bids them prove 
all things, and hold fast only that which is good, then 
they flatly refuse to do anything of the sort; and say, 
either that they are laymen and have not time, or that 
they are fools and have not wit, or that they are infidels 
and have not faith, and that their whole morality and 
religion rests only upon certain printed words, and not 
on the living God Himself. The great mass of the 
religious people of this generation are totally incapable 
of perceiving the full beauty even of their own religion ; 
and are right, where they are right at all, only by a happy 
accident. Long intercourse with them, unrelieved by 
nobler fellowship, is a deadly narcotic, stupefying both 
the intellect and the conscience. Most certainly it is 


RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 


241 


well that we should he reminded again and again by 
such books as Mr. Reeky’s, that this mean preference 
for unreasoning prejudice, and this suspicious hatred of 
manifesting li^ht, is surely doomed; that it is 
the mere corpse of a past that has not yet been able to 
obtain decent burial; that it is the mere paganism of 
Christianity. 

Mr Lecky has himself defined what he means by 
Rationalism. 

“ My object,” he says, “ in the present work has been to trace 
the history of the spirit of Rationalism; by which I understand, 
not any class of definite doctrines or criticisms, but rather a 
certain cast of thought, or bias of reasoning, which has during 
the last three centuries gained a marked ascendancy in Europe. 
The nature of this bias will be exhibited in detail in the ensuing 
pages, where we examine its influence upon the various forms of 
moral and intellectual development. At present it will be 
sufficient to say, that it leads men on all occasions to subordinate 
dogmatic theology to the dictates of reason and of conscience, 
and, as a necessary consequence, greatly to restrict its influence 
upon life. It predisposes men, in history, to attribute all kinds of 
phenomena to natural rather than miraculous causes; in theology, 
to esteem succeeding systems the expressions of the wants and 
aspirations of that religious sentiment which is planted in all 
men; and in ethics, to regard as duties only those which 
conscience reveals to be such.”* 

It is of course necessary to bear in mind that this is 
Mr. Lecky’s own definition of the word Rationalism; 
his own account of the bias or tendency whose growth 
and influence he endeavours to describe. Every author 
has a perfect right to declare in what sense he uses the 
words which he has most frequent occasion to employ, 
even if he intends to depart somewhat from their 
ordinary usage. Butin his use of the term “Ration- 

Ep. 18, 19. 

R 



242 


RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 


alism,” Mr. Lecky only so far departs from the ordinary 
usage as to exclude from its connotation any implication 
of recklessness, or dishonesty, or rebellion against the 
truth. It may almost be affirmed that, to begin with, 
there is no truth , but only and infinite number of facts 
and relations —to be discovered, arranged, and described 
in human language. Then real facts are represented by 
true propositions; and, in like manner, all facts beyond the 
reach of observation can be represented as truths only 
by propositions which are essentially hypothetical. 
“ If the source of my information he trustworthy , there 
are certain facts which I have no means directly of 
observing, but which may be considered real because 
they have been observed by others.” It is characteristic 
of Rationalism that it knows no truths which are not the 
representatives of observed facts ; and that it requires 
their having been observed to be completely demon¬ 
strated. It is, therefore, always destructive of those 
complicated theories, and systems of dogmas, which rest 
upon actually nothing but the unsupported assertion of 
people who cannot be proved to be in a position to know 
what they affirm. Those who accept such theories know 
perfectly that they will not bear examination; and yet the 
theories are in part well founded, and have moreover a 
practical value, and are referred by them to a divine source, 
and are associated with their deepest religious feelings. 
A rationalist, therefore, is to them a man who denies the 
truth, who destroys practical piety, who repudiates divine 
guidance, and who is a cold-hearted profligate. So con¬ 
stant is this belief among the uninstructed, that they mass 
'together all inquirers into the foundations of religion in one 
class of mischievous evil-doers; and they name the class ac¬ 
cording to their own prejudices, their own notion of what is 


RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 


243 


most utterly shameful and base. At the last general elec¬ 
tion, for instance, as every one remembers, Mr. J. S. Mill 
was represented over and over again as an Atheist; not be¬ 
cause he is an Atheist, but simply because he found it abso¬ 
lutely impossible to believe in a God who was represented 
to be very far inferior to even the average of human beings. 
Hume, and Gibbon, and Volney, and Rousseau, and Vol¬ 
taire, and the Dean of Westminster, and the Rev. F. D. 
Maurice, and Professor Jowett, and Bishop Colenso, have 
repeatedly—with total indifference to the fact that some of 
them are unquestionably among the best men who have 
ever lived, and that probably no two of them would be found 
to agree, either in their methods of inquiry, or in their re¬ 
sults—been grouped together as infidels, destroyers of the 
Church, subverters of the Word of God, profane profligates. 
They agree, though perhaps some of them might dispute 
even that, simply in the fact that they do not, and indeed 
cannot, believe what is opposed to the dictates of reason and 
conscience; and to those dictates they habitually subordi¬ 
nate dogmatic theology. Some of them think that the 
creed of Christendom, and especially the teaching of the 
sacred Scriptures, expresses perfectly the truth concerning 
God and the duty of man ; and they do not seem to be 
aware how after all they may be submitting their reason to 
some external authority, simply because that authority has 
been first guaranteed by reason. Others reject the Bible 
and the creeds because they are unable to discover that 
reason will consent to submit to them. But all alike be¬ 
long to the class of those who seek for real facts, and the 
fittest verbal expression of them ; or if any of them have 
been immoral or profligate, if they were trying in some 
directions to suppress that very spirit of inquiry, the 
suppression of which in their own case tliey would have 

r 2 


244 


RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 


considered a most unjustifiable persecution, then it must 
be said that they were most imperfect rationalists, and 
that they forgot for others what they knew to be essential 
for themselves. Mr. Lecky, then, in his very definition 
of rationalism, has done good service to the cause of 
truth, and thereby also to the cause of charity. He has 
removed entirely from the meaning of the word every¬ 
thing that can shock even the most sensitive conscience. 
A rationalist is not necessarily either orthodox or hereti¬ 
cal, he is not necessarily a good man, much less is he neces¬ 
sarily a bad man; but in so far as he is a rationalist he is 
a seeker after truth, preserving himself as far as possible 
from every bias that w r ould prevent his finding it. 

• “ It is manifest,” says Mr. Lecky, # “ tliat, in attempting to 
write the history of a mental tendency, some difficulties have to 
be encountered quite distinct from those which attend a simple 

relation of facts.Probably the greatest difficulty of 

such a process of investigation arises from the wide difference 
between professed and realized belief. When an opinion that is 
opposed to the age is incapable of modification, and is an obstacle 
to progress, it will at last be openly repudiated ; and if it is 
identified with any existing interests, or associated with some 
eternal truth, its rejection will he accompanied by paroxysms of 
painful agitation. But much more frequently civilization makes 
opinions that are opposed to it simply obsolete. They perish by 
indifference, not by controversy. They are relegated to the dim 
twilight land that surrounds every living faith; the land, not of 
death, hut of the shadow of death; the land of the unrealized 
and the inoperative. Sometimes, too, we find the phraseology, 
the ceremonies, the formularies, the external aspect of some phase 
of belief that has long since perished, connected with a system 
that has been created by the wants, and is thrilling with the 
life, of modern civilization. They resemble those images of 
departed ancestors which it is said the ancient Ethiopians were 
accustomed to paint upon their bodies, as if to preserve the 


*Pp 19—21. 





RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 


245 


pleasing illusion that those could not really he dead whose linea¬ 
ments were still visible among them, and were still associated 
with life. In order to appreciate the change, we must translate 
these opinions into action, must examine what would be their 
effects if fully realized, and ascertain how far those effects are 
actually produced. It is necessary, therefore, not merely to 
examine successive creeds, but also to study the types of character 
of successive ages.” 

These remarks, which are obviously true, furnish the 
key to a large part of the most interesting portions of 
Mr. Lecky’s hook. The history of what men have 
believed is one thing, and the history of what they 
think they have believed is a totally different thing; 
and it requires not a little skill to determine when a 
man has been totally mistaken, even in his own belief. 
The test applied by Mr. Lecky, though even that test is 
not always easily applied, is the simplest and the surest. 
What a man really believes cannot fail to influence his 
conduct; the creed which does not influence a man’s 
conduct, however strong its language may he, in spite of 
its most magnificent promises and crudest anathemas, 
is little better than a delusion. It has ceased to he 
operative, and therefore it may he inferred that it has 
ceased really to live. Illustrations of the application of 
this test abound in every part of Mr. Lecky’s work. 
His first chapter is “On the declining sense of the 
Miraculous—Magic and Witchcraftand it is a com¬ 
plete historical exhibition of the decline and death of a 
most pestilent superstition, which after a long period of 
dreadful vitality began slowly to decay, which was dead 
long before its death was so much as suspected, and 
which by some few even still is supposed to be not 
wholly extinct. When good people read of the “ witch ” 
of Endor, and “ those who have familiar spirits,” they 


246 


RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 


fancy that they still believe that there really were in 
times past, and might possibly he again, human beings 
in constant intercourse with demons. Others, again, 
“ spiritualize ” the old-world stories, and fill them up 
with meanings that were wholly impossible, not only 
before Christ, hut even before the eighteenth century. 
There may be demons of lust and cruelty and fraud, 
and spirits of mischief of every sort, with which it is 
only too easy to become “familiar;” hut these are not 
the devils for which witches were burnt to death. 
Educated men have ceased to believe not only that there 
are witches, hut that there ever were ; and the utmost 
that the most credulous can now persuade themselves to 
admit is simply this, tha’t it would be unwise and 
dangerous to deny the existence of certain forms of evil 
which seem to he constantly referred to in the sacred 
Scriptures. They believe, that is to say, not in witches, 
hut in the general veracity of the Bible. When people 
really believed in witchcraft, it was quite impossible to 
doubt both the sincerity of their conviction; or to doubt 
that it was a perpetual torment, and an occasion of diabo¬ 
lical cruelties which nothing but a perverted sense of 
duty would ever have been strong enough to produce. 

“ Witchcraft,’’ says Mr. Buclde,* “ was but the reflection by a 
diseased imagination of the popular theology. We accordingly 
find that it assumed the most frightful proportions and the 
darkest character. In other lands, the superstition was at least 
mixed with much of imposture ; in Scotland it appears to have 
been entirely undiluted. It was produced by the teaching of the 
clergy, and it was everywhere fostered by their persecution. 
Eagerly, passionately, with a thirst for blood that knew no mercy, 
with a zeal that never tired, did they accomplish their task. 
Assembled in solemn synod, the college of Aberdeen, in 1603, 


* Yol. i., pp. 139—142. 



RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 


247 


enjoined every minister to take two of the elders of liis parish to 
make ‘ a subtle and privy inquisition,’ and to question all the 
parishioners upon oath as to their knowledge of witches. Boxes 
were placed in the churches for the express purpose of receiving 
the accusations. When a woman had fallen under suspicion, the 
minister from the pulpit denounced her by name, exhorted his 
parishioners to give evidence against her, and prohibited any one 
from sheltering her. In the same spirit he exerted the power 
which was given him by a parochial organization, elaborated 
perhaps more skilfully than any other in Europe. Under these 
circumstances, the witch-cases seem to have fallen almost entirely 
into the hands of the clergy. They were the leading commissioners. 
Before them the confessions were taken. They were the ac¬ 
quiescing witnesses, or the directors of the tortures by which 
those confessions were elicited. 

“ And when we read the nature of these tortures, which were 
worthy of an Oriental imagination ; when we remember that they 
were inflicted, for the most part, on old and feeble and lialf-doting 
women, it is difficult to repress a feeling of the deepest 
abhorrence for those men who caused and who encouraged them. 
If the witch was obdurate, the first, and it is said the most 
effectual, method of obtaining confession was by what was termed 
‘ waking her.’ An iron bridle or hoop was bound across her face 
with four prongs, which were thrust into her mouth. It was 
fastened behind to the wall by a chain, in such a manner that the 
victim was unable to lie down, and in this position she was 
sometimes kept for several days, while men were constantly with 
her to prevent her from closing her eyes for a moment in sleep. 
Partly in order to effect this object, and partly to discover the 
insensible mark which was the sure sign of a witch, long pins 
were thrust into her body. At the same time, as it was a saying 
in Scotland that a witch would never confess while she could 
drink, excessive thirst was often added to her tortures. Some 
prisoners have been waked for five nights; one, it is said, even 
for nine. 

“ The physical and mental suffering of such a process was 
sufficient to overcome the resolution of many, and to distract the 
understanding of not a few. But other and perhaps worse 
tortures were in reserve. The three principal that were habitually 
applied -were the pennywinkis, the boots, and the caschielawis. 
The first was a kind of thumb-screw ; the second was a frame in 


248 


RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 


which the leg was inserted, and in which it was broken by w T edges, 
driven in by a hammer ; the third was also an iron frame for the 
leg, which was from time to time heated over a brazier. Fire- 
matches were sometimes applied to the body of the victim. We 
read in a contemporary legal register of one man who w r as kept 
for forty-eight hours in ‘ vehement tortour ’ in the cascliielawis ; 
and of another who remained in the same frightful machine for 
eleven days and eleven nights, whose legs were broken daily for 
fourteen days in the boots, and who was so scourged that the 
whole skin was torn from his body. This was, it is true, censured 
as an extreme case, but it was only an excessive application of 
the common torture.” 

Now that is something like believing in witchcraft; it 
was not only a most genuine faith, but it seems to have 
had a grim unselfishness, making it almost sublime. 
Many were accused of witchcraft for no other reason 
than that they were uncommonly skilful in the cure of 
diseases, and were ever ready to employ their skill for 
the relief of the suffering. In most Catholic countries the 
civil power refused to execute persons who were guilty 
only of the crime of alleviating the miseries of their 
fellow-creatures. At this gross neglect of obvious duty, 
the clergy were of course indignant; fortunately only 
Catholic inquisitors have been able to match the horrors 
for which Scotch Calvinism has to answer. In Scotland 
such persons were unscrupulously put to death. And yet, 
as Mr. Lecky very properly acknowledges, the men who 
were chiefly guilty of these atrocities are not so much 
to he blamed as pitied. 

“ There are,” he says, # “ opinions that may be traced from age 
to age by footsteps of blood; and the intensity of the suffering 
they caused is a measure of the intensity with which they were 
realized. Scotch witchcraft was but the result of Scotch 
Puritanism, and it faithfully reflected the character of its parent. 


# Yol. i., pp 144, 145. 




RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 


249 


It is true that before the Reformation the people had been grossly 
ignorant and superstitious, but it is also true that witchcraft in its 
darker forms was so rare that no law was made on the subject till 
1563 ; that the law was not carried to its full severity till 1590 ; 
that the delusion invariably accompanied the religious terrorism 
which the Scotch clergy so zealously maintained, and that those 
clergy, all over Scotland, applauded and stimulated the persecution. 
The ascendancy they had obtained was boundless, and in this 
respect their power was entirely undisputed. One word from 
them might have arrested the tortures, but that word was never 
spoken. Their conduct implies, not merely a mental aberration, 
but also a callousness of feeling which has rarely been attained 
in a long career of vice. Yet these were men who had often 
shown in the most trying circumstances the highest and the most 
heroic virtues. They were men whose courage had never flinched 
when persecution was raging around; men who had never 
paltered with their consciences to attain the favours of a king ; 
men whose self-devotion and zeal in their sacred calling had 
seldom been surpassed; men who in all the private relations of 
life were doubtless amiable and affectionate. It is not on them 
that our blame should fall; it is on the system that made them 
what they were. They were hut illustrations of the great truth, 
that when men have come to regard a certain class of their 
fellow-creatures as doomed by the Almighty to eternal and 
excruciating agonies, and when their theology directs their minds 
with intense and realizing earnestness to the contemplation of 
such agonies, the result will be an indifference to the suffering of 
those whom they deem the enemies of their God, as absolute as it 
is perhaps possible for human nature to attain.” 

The reality of a belief, then, may he almost certainly 
determined by its practical result. Centuries ago people 
did believe, and now ice do not believe, that the world 
swarms with devils, that the Creator of the w'orld is a 
hideous monster, choosing, for utterly undiscoverable 
reasons, to bestow exceptional and often demoralizing 
favours upon a very small minority of mankind, and 
hunting all the rest through all manner of vices and 
miseries in this world into unutterable and everlasting 


250 


RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 


agonies in the next. Instead of believing this, the 
* belief in huge armies of demons subject to the com¬ 
mands, and ever ready to do the bidding, of an 
omnipresent chief, has been removed to “the region,” 
as Mr. Buckle calls it,“ of the shadow of death.” The 
devil and his angels are fading rapidly away into 
metaphor; dreadful mental diseases, and even some 
gigantic excesses of immorality, and uncontrollable 
impulses to crime, are referred now, not to demoniacal 
possessions, but to diseases of the brain. The belief in 
witchcraft therefore has entirely passed away, because it 
is entirely incompatible with other beliefs, which it may 
safely be predicted will never give place to the old 
superstition. But it is by no mere process of direct ar¬ 
gument that this result has been obtained ; it is not the 
force of logic alone that has altered the beliefs and con¬ 
duct of men ; but rather their altered circumstances have 
brought into a new light the arguments which in logic 
were always valid, and the premisses of which were just 
as compatible with the nature of man and the character 
of God in the first century as they are in the last. Nor 
is it difficult to determine at least some of the causes 
which have changed the circumstances, and so indirectly 
altered the beliefs of civilized men. The growth of 
physical science alone, though there were many other 
causes, would account for the change. It is quite 
impossible for anybody who has even the vaguest 
knowledge of chemistry or physiology, or any other of 
the sciences which come nearest to the life of man, to 
believe in old women traversing the air on broomsticks ; 
destroying the health and life of those they hate by 
sitting in their own houses and melting little wax images 
before their own fires; or blighting human joy by an 


RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 


251 


ugly look. Nobody now lias tbe slightest dread of the 
evil eye; and, on the other hand, nobody believes that 
sicknesses are cured by Satanic remedies, and that men 
can know more than their fellows only by becoming 
enormously more wicked than they. The enlargement 
of commerce, the increase of political freedom, the in¬ 
numerable common interests, apart from theology, which 
bind men together, even in spite of the differences in 
their creeds—all such causes have combined to render 
it impossible to tolerate those hideous cruelties and 
cold-blooded murders which were perpetrated for cen¬ 
turies in the name of Almighty God. 

And even here we may take occasion to remark, 
though every succeeding chapter of Mr. Lecky’s book 
furnishes additional proof, that no single name, such for 
instance as a nation being called Jewish or Christian, 
is sufficient to determine what those religious influences 
are to which the nation is really subject. Beligion 
cannot be imported from one country to another like 
hogsheads of sugar. Names indeed may be imported, 
and ceremonies, and even some doctrinal formularies ; 
but it depends upon very complicated causes whether or 
not the imported names will stand for the same things 
which they denoted in their earlier home, or the 
ceremonies have the same significance, or the doctrinal 
formularies be the expressions of any real experience or 
beliefs. Papists and reformers, persecutors and their 
victims, have alike belonged to Christendom; and have 
imagined they found their rules of life in the Christian 
Scriptures and the honoured example of. holy men. 
Especially is it altogether uncertain what immediate 
effect will follow the introduction of the Bible to a new 
home. Whether the readers will direct their lives by 


252 


RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 


the Old Testament or the New; whether their ideal man 
will be found among the stern ministers of wrath that 
hewed captive kings in pieces before the Lord, or in 
Him who took upon Him the form of a servant and 
went about doing good; whether they will persecute 
after the one model or save after the other—all this 
depends not upon the Bible taken alone, but upon the 
Bible taken together with all the forces, old and new, 
endlessly combining, which determine the character of a 
people. The circumstances of the Scotch clergy, for 
instance, as Mr. Lecky has shown, rendered it inevitable 
that they should really receive the Old Testament rather 
than the New; and therefore hold in abeyance such 
newer teachings and more merciful examples as were 
incompatible with the Jewish customs and laws, though 
they held the place of honour in the Christian 
Scriptures. 

“ Their circumstances made them liberals, and they naturally 
sought to clothe their liberalism in a theological garb. They soon 
discovered precedents for their rebellions in the history of the 
judges and captains of the Jews ; and accordingly the union of an 
intense theological, and an intense liberal feeling, made them 
revert to the scenes of the Old Testament, to the sufferings and 
also the conquests of the Jews, with an affection that seems now 
almost inconceivable. Their whole theology took an Old 
Testament cast. Their modes of thought, their very phraseology, 
were derived from that source ; and the constant contemplation of 
the massacres of Canaan, and of the provisions of the Levitical 
code, produced its natural effect upon their minds.”* 

So, in general politics, it depended not alone on the 
Bible, hut on the nature also of the government under 
which men were living, whether they would iearn the 


* Vol. i., p. 14G. 



RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 


253 


glory of regicides from the Old Testament, or the duty 
of passive obedience from the New. Here also the Old 
Testament commended itself to the political necessities 
of the democratic Scotch, and the New to Anglican 
conservatives. 

Magic and witchcraft are forms of the miraculous, 
hut they were by no means the only forms-accepted by 
the intellect and conscience of more credulous ages. 
The miracles of the Church were as numerous as the 
miracles of the devil; and they were as readily believed 
by men who had not as yet beheld the wondrous order 
of the universe of God. “At present, nearly all 
educated men receive an account of a miracle taking 
place in their own day with an absolute and even 
derisive incredulity, which dispenses with all examination 
of the evidence. Although they may be entirely unable 
to give a satisfactory explanation of some phenomena that 
have taken place, they never on that account dream of 
ascribing them to supernatural agency; such an hypo¬ 
thesis being, as they believe, altogether beyond the range 
of reasonable discussion.”* We have arrived at this 
complete unbelief of supernatural interpositions through 
a long course of preparations, and as the result not of 
a direct disproof of the possibility or even the pro¬ 
bability of miracles, but of the knowledge of laws which 
we find operating uniformly and without interruption as 
far as our experience has reached, and which render 
miracles unnecessary, or even injurious. A disproof of 
the possibility of a miracle is not often attempted by 
those who believe in a personal God; and, at any rate, 
it has never been furnished. But none the less for that 


* Vol. i., p. 1. 





254 


RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 


have men come to believe that, instead of strengthening 
their faith in a wise ruler of the universe, a miracle 
wrought before their very eyes would almost seem to 
them the herald of chaos. It would seem a ghastly 
triumph of disorder; it w r ould bring into at least a 
temporary doubt that great postulate on which all human 
thought and nil human action rest—the relation between 
cause and effect. Nothing but the haze of long distance, 
and the special necessities of the greatest crisis of the 
world’s history, can save their faith, or at least suspend 
their disbelief, of those inexplicable wonders on which 
Christianity itself is founded. 

That Mr. Lecky himself does not deny the possibility 
(and probably believes the reality) of the great Christian 
miracles, is abundantly clear from his own words, and 
at any rate the progress of genuine Rationalism by no 
means involves the denial. 

“ When men first grasped,” he says,* “ the truth that the ten¬ 
dency of the human mind was from polytheism to monotheism, 
there were some who at once rushed on to atheism, considering 
that to be a continuation of the same movement. The disbelief 
in ghosts Jed many to materialism, and the discovery that man 
was not the centre of all the contrivances of nature made not a 
few deny final causes. Just so, science having shown that the 
phenomena of nature do not result (as every one once supposed) 
from direct and isolated acts of intervention, multitudes have 
passed by the impetus of the movement to the denial of the 
possibility of miracles. To say that Omnipotence cannot reverse 
the laws of His appointment is a contradiction in terms. To say 
that an Infinite mind never modifies those laws for special 
purposes, and in a manner that exceeds both human capacities 
and human comprehension, is to make an assertion that is 
unproved and contrary to analogy. To say that the metaphysical 


* Vol. i., pp. 198, 199 (foot-note). 





RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 


255 


conception of Infinity precludes the notion of miracles is useless, 
because (as Mansel and others have shown) the creation of the 
world is equally irreconcilable with that conception, and because 
the existence of evil throws all such reasoning into hopeless 
confusion. To say, in fine, that there was no use in miracles 
accompanying a revelation in an early stage of society, is 
completely to ignore the passion for the wonderful and the dim 
perception of the moral which are the characteristics of such a 
society. All these propositions flow naturally, but not legitimately, 
out of the reaction against the ‘ government by miracle,’ in which 
Europe once believed. The logical consequences of the move¬ 
ment are, I think, twofold. 1. The difficulty of proving miracles 
satisfactorily is incalculably increased, because it is shown that, 
in a certain phase of civilization, the belief in miracles necessarily 
arises, and that many thousands, which are now universally 
rejected, were then universally believed, supported by a vast 
amount of evidence, and entirely unconnected with imposition. 
2. The essentially moral character which theology progressively 
acquires renders miraculous evidence (except for a particular class 
of minds) useless.” 

The credibility of the great miracles, the Incarnation 
and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, depends upon the 
consideration that Tie who cannot act at all without 
limiting Himself to some mode of acting, may well 
submit to such limitations as may best reveal to men 
His own goodness and the true dignity of human nature ; 
and the fact also, that these miracles were not mere 
physical marvels, but mighty instruments in the moral 
development of mankind. It was, indeed, one chief 
object of the teaching of Jesus to withdraw men from 
a superstitious longing for mere wonders to a perception 
of their spiritual significance as signs of a divine order, 
a kingdom of heaven. But it must surely be admitted 
that the credibility of an alleged miracle affirmed to be 
wrought by God, diminishes directly, as its moral quality 
and purpose diminish. The miracles of the ‘ 11 Gospel of 


256 


RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 


the Infancy,” for instance, are utterly disbelieved, not 
simply for want of evidence, but because they are 
absolutely worthless ; they have no moral or spiritual 
value. For exactly the same reason no prudent divine will 
now offer the miracles of the Church as proofs of her divine 
commission ; on the contrary, if be believe them at all, 
he will strengthen the other proofs of her divine com¬ 
mission as much as possible, in order that it may he 
able to hear the enormous burden of the ecclesiastical 
miracles. Nobody regards in the same way the pre¬ 
servation of Jonah in the whale’s body, and the raising 
of the widow of Nain’s son from the dead. For the 
one, all our gentlest affections plead; for the other, we 
do not care at all—not even enough to rouse ourselves 
to deny it. Even if it be true, it does not touch one of 
the necessities, or dangers, or griefs of our own lives. 
The resurrection of the dead is not so much, even in 
appearance, an interference with the laws of nature, as 
an assertion that when those laws of nature with which 
we are familiar, have exhausted themselves upon the 
human body, the very man himself is still alive; subject, 
doubtless, still to divinely-appointed laws, but not de¬ 
stroyed. But the conditions of human life in a whale’s 
belly are absolutely not worth knowing. 

But any attempt to reduce the number or apologize 
for the moral effect of miracles is itself a proof of the 
silent change that has been wrought by enlarged ex¬ 
perience, truer canons of criticism, and the growth of 
the physical sciences. The mythopoeic age, in any 
country and in any faith, requires an apology for the 
absence of miracles. Mr. Grote has proved this with 
absolute completeness in a region sufficiently remote 
from religious prejudice to admit of a close approxima- 


RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 


257 


tion to impartiality. He lias detected Greek myths in 
all stages of their production ; and endless variations of 
divine interposition according to the mental character¬ 
istics, or geographical position, or political partialities 
of those who created both their gods and a history of 
divine achievements. He has shown us that so far from 
general belief being any proof of the reality of super¬ 
natural interpositions, it is in certain ages, and certain 
stages of religious development, a very clear warning 
that such interpositions are so eagerly desired, that any 
assertion that they have taken place would be received 
without evidence at all. And this in Greek history is 
exactly similar to what characterized the period before 
the Reformation. In the writings of the fathers we find 
miracles spoken of as existing in profusion. 

“If we pass from the fathers into the middle ages, we find 
ourselves in an atmosphere that was dense and charged with the 
supernatural. The demand for miracles was almost boundless, 
and the supply was equal to the demand. Men of extraordinary 
sanctity seemed naturally and habitually to obtain the power of 
performing them, and their lives are crowded with their achieve¬ 
ments, which were attested by the highest sanction of the Church. 
Nothing could be more common than for a holy man to be lifted 
up from the floor in the midst of his devotions, or to be visited by 
the Virgin or by an angel. There was scarcely a town that could 
not show some relic that had cured the sick, or some image that 
had opened and shut its eyes, or bowed its head to an earnest 
worshipper. It was somewhat more extraordinary, but not in the 
least incredible, that the fish should have thronged to the shore 
to hear St. Anthony preach, or that it should be necessary to cut 
the hair of the crucifix at Burgos once a month, or that the Virgin 
of the Pillar, at Saragossa, should, at the prayer of one of her 
worshippers, have restored a leg that had been amputated. Men 
who were afflicted with apparently hopeless disease, started in a 
moment into perfect health when brought into contact with a relic 
of Christ or of the Virgin. The virtue of such relics radiated in 
blessings all around them. Glorious visions heralded their 


258 


RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 


discovery, and angels have transported them through the air. If 
a missionary went abroad among the heathens, supernatural signs 
confounded his opponents, and made the powers of darkness fly 
before his steps. If a Christian prince unsheathed his sword in 
an ecclesiastical cause, apostles had been known to combat with 
his army, and avenging miracles to scatter his enemies. If an 
unjust suspicion attached to an innocent man, he had immediately 
recourse to an ordeal which cleared his character and condemned 
his accusers. All this was going on habitually in every part of 
Europe without exciting the smallest astonishment or scepticism. 
Those who know how thoroughly the supernatural element per¬ 
vades the old lives of the saints, may form some notion of the 
multitude of miracles that were related and generally believed 
from the fact that M. Guizot has estimated the number of these 
lives, accumulated in the Bollandist Collection, at about twenty- 
five thousand. Yet this was but one department of miracles. It 
does not include the thousands of miraculous images and pictures 
that were operating throughout Christendom, and the countless 
apparitions and miscellaneous prodigies that were taking place in 
every country, and on all occasions. Whenever a saint was 
canonized, it was necessary to prove that he had worked miracles ; 
but except on these occasions miraculous accounts seem never to 
have been questioned. The most educated, as well as the most 
ignorant, habitually resorted to the supernatural as the simplest 
explanation of every difficulty.”* 

Why is it that all these miraculous interpositions are 
now regarded with such “ derisive incredulity,” that 
even devout believers in the sacred Scriptures never hear 
of a modern miracle without disgust, without feeling 
that it is an impertinence, an attempt to rival the glories 
of that wondrous era when the religion of Jesus Christ 
made its first entrance into the world ? Many Christian 
people indeed still believe in miracles, wrought before 
their own eyes, in their own day. They believe that in 
consequence of their own prayers, God alters the course 
of the seasons, sends rain in drought, and fair weather 


* Vol. i., pp. 153—155. 



RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 


259 


after rain ; they believe that for the same reason He 
supersedes bad sliip-building, and delivers sailors in 
crazy vessels from the violence of tempests ; they believe 
that in like manner He will so far reverse the operation 
of ordinary causes, that He will grant in answer to prayer 
an abundant harvest, even though the sowing has been 
scanty, or the soil impoverished by neglect or ignorance. 
Even great institutions—great at any rate in the large¬ 
ness of their operations, and the magnitude of their 
liabilities—are supported by no other means than an 
appeal on the one hand to the miracle-working power of 
God, and on the other to the extreme credulity of the 
British public. Such appeals are never entirely in vain ; 
for there is a large number of people who are grieved 
and terrified at the progress of reason, who mourn over 
even their own subjection to the spirit of the age, and 
who imagine that the worth of their faith is determined 
by the mere quantity of what they believe. But though 
the reports of such institutions are utterly ridiculous, 
even when they are not blasphemous, even those who 
compile them, and who possibly also believe them, are 
so far mastered by the power of rationalism that they 
dare not call a miracle by its own name. The mode of 
feeding the orphans in a large establishment near Bristol 
differs in no essential particular from the mode of feeding 
the five thousand, unless indeed it be an essential differ¬ 
ence that the Bristol establishment begins without even 
the loaves and fishes. If people can obtain what they 
want by kneeling down to pray for it, instead of by going 
into the market and buying it; if they can get diseases 
cured by prayer, instead of by medical skill and medi¬ 
cine ; wherein does all this differ from the unwasting 
barrel of meal and cruse of oil, or the effects of the 

s 2 


260 


RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 


prayer of Elijah, “ 0 Lord, my God, let the spirit of 
this child come unto him again, that he may live?” 
But people who pray for rain, and who profess to support 
enormous households without any human resources, 
know perfectly well that they would be regarded as hope¬ 
less lunatics if they pretended for a single moment that 
they possessed the power of working miracles. But the 
very fact that they are compelled to repudiate the proper 
name for the thing they think they possess, is an impor¬ 
tant testimony to the overwhelming power of nationalism. 

Why is it then that the belief in modern miracles has 
so completely died away, and that even no amount of 
evidence can persuade us that any miracle whatever has 
been wrought for at least several centuries ? One reason 
is, that we have arrived at far better canons of criticism 
and tests of historical proof. It is not enough for us to 
know that some particular assertion has been made ; we 
must he satisfied that they who make the assertion 
have some fair means of knowing the truth of what they 
affirm. We require to be satisfied not only that some 
particular event might have happened, but that there is 
conclusive reason to believe that it did happen. Again, 
the industrious prosecutions of physical science have led 
men further and further into the region of divine opera¬ 
tions, and nowhere have they been able to discover, in 
any period of modern research, even the slightest devia¬ 
tions from the appointed order. Moreover, their re¬ 
searches have compelled them to admit that there is 
scarcely any evidence so untrustworthy as the first report 
of the senses. Very few people indeed are competent 
to say what they have seen with their eyes, or heard 
with their ears ; and men whose habits of observation 
have been cultivated with the utmost care, and protected 


RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 


261 


with the most scupulous anxiety from any possibility of 
bias, are not likely to receive as sufficient proof of mira¬ 
cles the second-hand reports of superstitious and ignorant 
observers, whose moral characteristics incline them not 
to doubt the presence, but to doubt the absence of a 
supernatural interposition. But there is yet another, 
and perhaps a better reason still, for the complete dis¬ 
credit into which all but the very greatest miracles have 
fallen. It is a reason furnished rather by the conscience 
than the intellect. Miracles have ceased to be expected, 
because they have ceased to be desired. Men love wis¬ 
dom far more than power ; they believe that order, fore¬ 
knowledge, and a complete pre-arrangement, sufficient 
for all possible emergencies, are immeasurably more 
divine than any manifestations, however appalling or 
even benevolent, of mere caprice. People feel that if 
miracles were ever necessary, and they are often very 
willing to confess that they once were, they are cer¬ 
tainly unnecessary now. The gift of healing was 
immeasurably less useful, or at any rate would be 
immeasurably less useful now, than medical and surgical 
skill. Even if it were more immediately available for 
the cure of diseases, it would tend directly to repress 
that effort, and render unnecessary that thorough culture 
of all the faculties, without which all real greatness is 
impossible. The same may be said of all the other 
special gifts of the apostolic age ; they could be neces¬ 
sary only when men were ignorant and weak, and if 
they were continued beyond that period of weakness 
they would tend only to perpetuate it. 

Few educated persons therefore now in this country 
believe in miracles, excepting so far as to admit that, in 
the infancy of the human race, it is certainly possible 


262 


RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 


that God could have wrought them, but enormously 
difficult to prove that He ever actually did ; and that in 
the greatest moral crisis of human history, he gave to 
men a revelation of Himself which involved a departure 
from the ordinary laws of nature. But a yet clearer 
proof, if possible, of the prevalence of Rationali^n is to 
be found in the fact that the very meaning of the word 
miracle has been changed, so that the word is no longer 
used to indicate an inversion, or even a temporary sus¬ 
pension of the laws of nature. On the contrary, the 
sphere of law has been enlarged so as to include mira¬ 
cles, which are accordingly regarded not as breaches of 
laws we know, but as examples of the operation of laws 
with wdiich we are not yet familiar. 

“ We find also,” says Mr. Lecky,* “ even among the supporters 
of the evidential school, a strong tendency to meet the ration¬ 
alists, as it were, half-way,—to maintain that miracles are valid 
proofs, but that they do not necessarily imply the notion of a 
violation of natural law with which they had been so long asso¬ 
ciated They are, it is said, performed simply by the application 
of natural means guided by supernatural knowledge. The idea 
of interference can present no difficulty to any one who admits 
human liberty ; for those who acknowledge that liberty must hold 
that man has a certain power of guiding and controlling the laws 
of matter, that lie can of his own free will produce effects which 
would not have been produced without his intervention, and that 
in proportion as his knowledge of the laws of nature advances his 
power of adapting them to his purposes is increased. That mind 
can influence matter is itself one of the laws of nature. To adapt 
and modify general laws to special purposes is the occupation 
and the characteristic of every intelligence, and to deny this 
power to divine intelligence seems but little removed from atheism. 
It is to make the Deity the only torpid mind in the universe. 
There is, therefore, it is said, nothing improbable in the belief 
that Omniscience, by the selection of natural laws of which we 


* Yol. i., pp. 194—19G. 




RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 2G3 

are ignorant, could accomplish all those acts which we call mira¬ 
culous. According to this notion a miracle would not differ, 
generically, from a human act, though it would still be strictly 
available for evidential purposes. Miracles would thus be sepa¬ 
rated from a conception with which almost all the controversialists 
of the last century had identified them, and which is peculiarly 
repugnant to the tendencies of our age.” 

It will scarcely be denied, even by those who think 
the prevailing nationalism too undiscriminating in its 
rejection of the miraculous, that the God of the modern 
Church is a far more glorious Being than the capricious 
divinity who was supposed to be for ever interfering with 
the affairs of His creatures, and neutralizing the effects 
of His own imperfect foresight. 

The Creator Himself, indeed, has been ever the same; 
but the piety and morality of a man is determined, not 
only by what his God is, but by what has been revealed 
or discovered of the divine perfections. So long as men 
“ esteemed” God “ to be” capricious, “ to them He zeas” 
capricious ; and all their thought and action were based 
upon that misbelief. Even the Scriptures are not with¬ 
out the relics of that ignorance which was inevitable in 
the world’s infancy; though they bear a wonderful testi¬ 
mony to the eternal order in that region where it is most 
important—the region of morality. The mountains may 
depart and the hills be removed, but not the faithfulness 
or righteousness of God ; not the deep, wide, everlasting 
difference between right and wrong. That God should 
change the material for the sake of the spiritual, is by 
no means inconceivable and might be glorious ; but it is 
far more wonderful and glorious that His infinite wisdom 
has from the very beginning provided that the material 
shall ever be the minister of the true spirit, and shall 
need no change. The belief of miracles, indeed, with 


264 


RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 


a very few grand exceptions, marking the great crises in 
the history of the world, has utterly vanished; but in 
place of it there is a far surer belief in a living God, 
who is able to govern without miracles, and whose en¬ 
during order is the one comprehensive wonder of the 
universe. Even the belief in miracles was an early 
triumph of the very same spirit which has now rooted 
out the belief; it was wiser and nearer to the truth than 
that fetishism which it superseded. But faith in a 
living Person governing the world would itself become 
injurious, if w T e were suffered to believe that He is alto¬ 
gether such a one as ourselves. 

“ There is one other subject,” says Mr. Lecky,* “ of great 
importance which is naturally suggested by the movement w r e 
have been considering. We have seen how profoundly it has 
altered the character of Christian Churches. It has changed not 
only the outward form and manifestations, but the habits of 
thought, the religious atmosphere which was the medium through 
which all events were contemplated, and by which all reasonings 
were refracted. No one can doubt that if the modes of thought 
now prevailing on these subjects, even in Pioman Catholic 
countries, could have been presented to the mind of a Christian 
of the twelfth century, he would have said that so complete an 
alteration would involve the absolute destruction of Christianity. 
As a matter of fact, most of these modifications w'ere forced upon 
the reluctant Church by the pressure from without, and were 
specially resisted and denounced by the bulk of the clergy. They 
were represented as subversive of Christianity. The doctrine 
that religion could be destined to pass through successive phases 
of development w r as pronounced to be emphatically unchristian. 
The ideal Church was always in the past; and immutability, if 
not retrogression, was deemed the condition of life. We can now 
judge this resistance by the clear light of experience. Dogmatic 
systems have, it is true, been materially weakened ; they no longer 
exercise a controlling influence over the current of affairs. Per- 


* Yol. i., pp. 203—205. 




RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 


265 


secution, religious wars, absorbing controversies, sacred art, and 
theological literature, which once indicated a passionate interest 
in dogmatic questions, have passed away or become comparatively 
uninfluential. Ecclesiastical power throughout Europe has been 
everywhere -weakened, and weakened in each nation in pro¬ 
portion to its intellectual progress. If we were to judge the 
present position of Christianity by the tests of ecclesiastical 
history, it we were to measure it by the orthodox zeal of the 
great doctors of the past, we might well look upon its prospects 
with the deepest despondency and alarm. The spirit of the 
fathers has incontestably faded. The days of Athanasius and 
Augustine have passed away never to return. The whole course 
and tendency of thought is flowing in another direction. The 
controversies of bygone centuries ring with a strange hollowness 
on the ear. But if, turning from ecclesiastical historians, we 
apply the exclusively moral tests which the New Testament so 
invariably and so emphatically enforces, if we ask whether Chris¬ 
tianity has ceased to produce the living fruits of love and charity 
and zeal for truth, the conclusion we should arrive at would be 
very different. If it be true Christianity to dive with a passionate 
charity into the darkest recesses of misery and of vice, to irrigate 
every quarter of the earth with the fertilizing stream of an almost 
boundless benevolence, and to include all the sections of humanity 
in the circle of an intense and efficacious sympathy; if it be true 
Christianity to destroy or weaken the barriers which had sepa¬ 
rated class from class and nation from nation, to free war from its 
harshest elements, and to make a consciousness of essential 
equality and of a genuine fraternity dominate over all accidental 
differences; if it be, above all, true Christianity to cultivate a 
love of truth for its own sake, a spirit of candour and of tolerance 
towards those with whom we differ,—if these be the marks of a 
true and healthy Christianity, then never since the days of the 
Apostles has it been so vigorous as at present, and the decline of 
dogmatic systems and of clerical influence has been a measure if 
not a cause of its advance.” 

Mr. Lecky’s third chapter, “ ^Esthetic, Scientific, and 
Moral Developments of Rationalism,” is admirably 
written, and in every respect full of interest; hut what 
he says of moral development is worthy of very special 


266 


RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 


attention. It is an introduction to the long chapter on 
persecution; which is a history of oft-told horrors, 
written with unflinching justice, with sensitive humanity, 
and with exulting joy that both the emotional and logical 
antecedents of persecution are destroyed for ever. That 
so dreadful a curse should have blighted all Christendom 
for centuries, in spite of the divine gentleness of Jesus 
Christ, can he accounted for only by the principles that 
persecutors had adopted, or the moral atmosphere they 
breathed. The great emotional antecedent of perse¬ 
cution is to be found in the teaching of the early church 
concerning the future world. It is quite impossible for 
us to realize the effect of that teaching when it was 
really believed : it is even difficult for us to believe that 
men of heroic virtue and singular unselfishness should 
have dared to offer it to the world. We read with 
amazement such sermons as Dr. Pusey’s “ On Ever¬ 
lasting Punishment;” astonished that a generous man 
can seem to find a sort of righteous satisfaction in what, 
at best, could be only the most appalling mystery of the 
universe. ' But Dr. Pusey’s sermon is mere child’s play 
compared with the fiery denunciations of men like Ter- 
tullian. In a passage quoted by Mr. Lecky,* he actually 
promises the spectacle of the everlasting agonies of the 
damned as a compensation to those who were compelled 
to abstain from the enjoyments of the games and thea¬ 
tres of the heathen. 

“ ‘ What,’ lie exclaimed, ‘ shall be the magnitude of that scene ? 
How shall I wonder? How shall I laugh? How shall I re¬ 
joice ? How shall I triumph when I behold so many and such 
illustrious kings, who were said to have mounted into heaven, 
groaning with Jupiter their god in the lowest darkness of hell! 


* Chap, i., p. 357; quoted from Tertullian, Be Spectaculis, cap. xxx. 




RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 


2G7 


Then shall the soldiers who had persecuted the name of Christ 
burn in more cruel fire than any they had kindled for the saints. 
. . . Then shall the tragedians pour forth in their own mis¬ 

fortune more piteous cries than those with which they had made 
the theatre to resound, while their comedian’s powers shall be 
better seen as he becomes more flexible by the heat. Then shall 
the driver of the circus stand forth to view all blushing in his 
flaming chariot, and the gladiators pierced, not by spears, but by 
darts of fire. . . . Compared with such spectacles, with such 

subjects of triumph as these, what can praetor or consul, quaestor 
or pontiff, afford ? and even now faith can bring them near, 
imagination can depict them as present.’ ” 

In cine time such teaching was impressed upon the 
heart and thought of the vulgar by dreadful pictures ; 
and for the most refined it imparts a terrible repul¬ 
siveness even to the noblest poetry of the Catholic 
world. It was urged upon men as a fitting subject for 
frequent and long-continued meditation. The horrors 
of the future state of sinners was to them a sort of 
measure of their own deep abhorrence of that sin which 
deserved such severity of punishment. They were told 
that if hell seemed to them too much, it could only be 
because sin seemed too little ; and just because they had 
so inadequate a notion of the evil of sin did they need 
the protection against temptation which might he fur¬ 
nished them by terror. No cruelty that has ever cursed 
the world can approach in diabolical ingenuity the 
mediaeval tortures inflicted by the Church ; and the 
only excuse that can be offered for them is the fact that 
they were hut poor copies of the far more dreadful tor¬ 
ments inflicted by Almighty God. Nor was the awful 
effect of the teaching concerning the future state more 
than very slightly alleviated by the more generous 
Gospel which accompanied it. For, to begin with, 
there was no Gospel for all. There was no Gospel for 


268 


RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 


tlie unbaptized; even among the baptized there was no 
Gospel for the unelect. And when two divinities of 
equal power, one infinitely kind and the other infinitely 
malicious, are set before men for their worship, all his¬ 
tory testifies that the good God will be neglected, and 
the god-devil will have all the honour. For men will 
argue that they must he on their guard against the 
devil,—they must conciliate him and avert his wrath; 
for the slightest failure in their homage must involve 
swift ruin, even if they are not tormented for the mere 
amusement of divine cruelty. But the good God may 
be trusted to do no harm. He will forgive those neg¬ 
lects which the multiplied cares and anxieties of man¬ 
kind render almost inevitable. Above all, He will 
remember the cruel exactions of their infernal oppressor, 
and be Himself the less exacting. When the two deities 
are united in the same person, the same inexorable logic 
will still apply with equal or even greater force. The 
devil will be worshipped, the God will be forgotten. 
Perfect fear will cast out love. In the continual contem¬ 
plation of suffering the heart will grow hard, and men will 
learn to inflict torment on one another without remorse. 

The doctrine of everlasting torment still lingers in 
form, and even with some small realization, among the 
sterner minds of Christendom; men of abstractions, 
who carry dogmatic premisses to their last conclusions 
almost without a pang. But even they scarcely venture 
to teach that spirits are tortured in literal fire. For the 
most part the doctrine itself lias passed away ; destroyed 
not simply by truer interpretations of Scripture, but by 
habits of thought and methods of government with 
which the doctrine of everlasting hell fire is utterly and 
for ever incompatible. The penal code, especially, has 


RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 


269 


received the most careful consideration from statesmen 
and philanthropists ; men who were guided by conscience 
and reason, and not by dogmatic theology. Though this 
good work itself was retarded by the prevalence of the 
mediaeval doctrine of the future state, and would have 
continued wholly impossible if secular government had 
been in the hands of the clergy, nevertheless the 
punishment of criminals has been rendered more and 
more remedial, less and less revengeful and expiatory. 
Men realize, as they become more civilized and intelli¬ 
gent, the intensity of the suffering they inflict, and the 
innumerable differences of crimes. They perceive that 
in every case the worst sinner has been also, in some 
measure, sinned against. They recognize the unspeak¬ 
able value of a human spirit, and that no folly could be 
greater than to waste a living man. They treat an evil 
doer as they would treat a priceless gem that had some¬ 
how become flawed, well knowing that no part of the 
jewel may be thrown away. The recklessness of human 
life which characterizes semi-barbarous legislation has 
given place to a tenderness which is even in some danger 
of becoming excessive and hysterical; but the change is 
in the right direction, and is based on the true foun¬ 
dation of a high sense of the dignity of human nature. 
While a truer theology and nobler ethics have rendered 
this change possible, the change in modern penal legis¬ 
lation has re-acted most favourably on ethics and theo¬ 
logy. It is preposterous for those to hesitate about 
hanging a man for stealing a sheep, who believe that 
God, the fountain of all justice and law, would burn 
him in hell for ever for stealing a penny. It is ridicu¬ 
lous to attempt any accurate adjustment of punishments 
if all crimes are sins, and all sins deserve the infliction 


270 


RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 


of endless torment. It is absurd to make our punish¬ 
ments remedial if the divine example assure^ us that 
the great end of punishment is not reformation, hut 
revenge. Modern statesmen may not perhaps be pre¬ 
pared to deny in words the mediaeval doctrine ; but they 
adopt the far more effective method of denying it in 
every one of their acts, and denying it most emphatically 
in those acts which are most solemn. They simply 
reverse in their own government what they have been 
taught to believe is the mode of the divine government. 
They reverse it with loathing and scorn, as a horrid 
relic of barbarism which would be a disgrace to civiliza¬ 
tion. The social theories of modern life and the me¬ 
diaeval doctrine of the future state may live together in 
form, but never in reality ; one only will be realized, 
and the other will be in abeyance. 

The decay of the doctrine of the endless torment of 
the wicked in a literal fire lias removed the greatest of 
the emotional antecedents of persecution ; similar causes 
have been in continual operation to remove the logical 
antecedents. The chief of these was the doctrine of 
exclusive salvation, which is well stated, and without 
exaggeration, by Mr. Lecky. It included the doctrine 
of the absolute necessity of baptism. 

“ ‘ Be assured,’ writes St. Fulgentius, ‘ and doubt not that not 
only men who have obtained the use of their reason, but also 
little children who have begun to live in their mother's womb and 
have there died, or who, having been just born, have passed away 
from the world without the sacrament of holy baptism, adminis¬ 
tered in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, must be 
punished by the eternal torture of undjdng fire ; for although 
they have committed no sin by their own will, they have never¬ 
theless drawn with them the condemnation of original sin, by 
their carnal conception and nativity.’ It will be remembered that 


RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 


271 




these saints, while maintaining that infants whose existence was 
but for a moment descended into eternal lire on account of an 
apple that was eaten four thousand years before they were born, 
maintained also that the creation and the death of those infants 
were the direct, personal, and uncontrolled acts of the Deity.”* 

“ But the scope of the doctrine we are considering was not 
confined to unbaptized children; it extended also to all adults 
who were external to the Church. If the whole human race 
existed under a sentence of condemnation which could only be 
removed by connection with Christianity; and if this sentence 
were so stringent that even the infant was not exempt from its 
effects, it was natural that the adult heathen who added his 
personal transgressions to the guilt of Adam should be doomed 
at last to perdition. Nor did the fathers who constructed the 
early systems of theology at all shrink from the consequence. At 
a time when the Christian Church formed but an infinitesimal 
fraction of the community ; at a time when almost all the mem¬ 
bers who composed it were themselves converts from paganism, 
and reckoned among the pagans those who were bound to them 
by the closest ties of gratitude and affection, the great majority of 
the fathers deliberately taught that the entire pagan world was 
doomed to that state of punishment which they invariably de¬ 
scribed as literal and undying fire. In any age and under any 
circumstances such a doctrine must seem inexpressibly shocking; 
but it appears most peculiarly so when we consider that the con¬ 
vert who accepted it, and who, with a view to his own felicity, 
proclaimed the system of which he believed it to form a part to 
be a message of good tidings, must have acquiesced in the eternal 
perdition of the mother who had borne him, of the father upon 
whose knees he had played, of the friends who were associated 
with the happy years of childhood and early manhood, of the 
immense mass of his fellow-countrymen, and of all those heroes 
and sages who by their lives or precepts had first kindled a moral 
enthusiasm within his breast. All these were doomed by one 
sweeping sentence. Nor were they alone in their condemnation. 
The heretics, no matter how trivial may have been their error, 
were reserved for the same fearful fate. The Church- according 
to the favourite image of the fathers, was a solitary ark floating 


* Yol. i., pp 39?, 398. 




272 


RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 


upon a boundless sea of ruin. Within its pale there was sal¬ 
vation ; without it salvation was impossible. ‘ If any one out of 
Noah’s ark could escape the deluge,’ wrote St. Cyprian, ‘he who 
is out of the Church may also escape.’ ‘ Without this house,’ 
said Origen, ‘ that is without the Church, no one is saved.’ ‘ No 
one,’ said St. Augustin, ‘ cometh to salvation and eternal life 
except he who hath Christ for his head; but no one can have 
Christ for his head except he that is in His body, the Church.’ 
‘ Hold most firmly,’ added St. Fulgentius, ‘ and doubt not that 
not only all pagans, but also all Jews, heretics, and schismatics 
who depart from this present life outside the Catholic Church, are 
about to go into eternal fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.’ 
So prominent and so unquestionable was this doctrine deemed, that 
the council of Carthage, in the fourth century, made it one of the 
test questions put to every bishop, before ordination.”* 

It is quite impossible to exaggerate the mischievous 
effects of this terrible doctrine ; it is indeed difficult to 
determine whether it was more injurious to the intellect, 
or the conscience, or the affections. The mercy of its 
salvation aggravated, instead of palliating, the ferocity 
of its curse. It elevated mere ceremonies above spiritual 
life, and dogmatic orthodoxy above morality. It mul¬ 
tiplied pious frauds ; “it rendered universal that species 
of falsehood which is termed misrepresentation, and which 
consists mainly of the suppression of opposing facts 
and it utterly crushed the earnestness of inquiry, which 
is the only bulwark against the encroachments of error. 

“ The considerations I have adduced in the first part of this 
chapter,” says Mr. Lecky,f “ will be sufficient to show how in¬ 
jurious have been the effects of the doctrine of exclusive salvation. 
We have still, however, one consequence to examine, before which 
all others fade into insignificance. I mean, of course, religious 
persecution. This, which is perhaps the most fearful of all the 
evils that men have inflicted upon their fellows, is the direct 
practical result of the principles we have hitherto considered hi 


Yol. i., pp. 412—415. f Yol. ii., pp. 1 -;}. 




KATIONALISM IN EUKOPE. 


273 


their speculative aspect. If men believe with an intense and 
realizing faith that their own view of a disputed question is true 
beyond all possibility of mistake; if they further believe that 
those who adopt other views will be doomed by the Almighty to 
an eternity of misery which, with the same moral disposition, but 
with a different belief, they would have escaped, these men will, 
sooner or later, persecute to the full extent of their power. If 
you speak to them of the physical and mental suffering which 
persecution produces, or of the sincerity and unselfish heroism of 
its victims, they will reply that such arguments rest altogether 
on the inadequacy of your realization of the doctrine they believe- 
"What suffering that man can inflict can be comparable to the 
eternal misery of all who embrace the doctrine of the heretic ? 
What claim can human virtues have to our forbearance, if the 
Almighty punishes the mere profession of error as a crime of the 
deepest turpitude ? If you encountered a lunatic who, in his 
frenzy, was inflicting on multitudes around him a death of the 
most prolonged and excruciating agony, would you not feel 
justified in arresting his career by every means in your power,— 
by taking his life if you could not otherwise attain your object ? 
But if you knew that this man was inflicting not temporal but 
eternal death, if he was not a guiltless though dangerous madman, 
but one whose conduct you believed to involve the most heinous 
criminality, would you not act with still less compunction or 
hesitation ? Arguments from expediency, though they may in¬ 
duce men under some special circumstances to refrain from 
persecuting, will never make them adopt the principle of tolera¬ 
tion. In the first place, those who believe that the religious 
service of the heretic is an act positively offensive to the Deity 
will always feel disposed to put down that act if it is in their 
power, even though they cannot change the mental disposition 
from which it springs. In the next place, they will soon perceive 
that the intervention of the civil ruler can exercise almost as 
much influence upon belief as upon profession.” 

Mr. Lecky’s chapter on Persecution is admirably 
written; and is valuable, above all, because it does not 
waste indignation on men, but on the evil systems and 
mischievous dogmas by which they were fatally misled. 
It is not the persecutors, but the principles which justify 

T 


274 


RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 


and even demand persecution, wliich are rightly held up 
to the loathing and execration of mankind. The doc¬ 
trine of the endless torment of the wicked hardens the 
heart; the doctrine of exclusive salvation deadens the 
conscience and stupefies the intellect. These doctrines, 
therefore, are to be utterly repudiated; their deep im¬ 
morality, their absolute unreasonableness, their blas¬ 
phemous affront to Almighty wisdom and love, are 
without ceasing to be demonstrated and proclaimed. It 
is not even of bad men that we need to be most afraid, 
hut of those principles of morals or theology which can¬ 
not fail to make bad all who accept them. That these 
doctrines are rapidly dying out, is happily indisputable. 
It matters almost nothing that they remain in creeds 
and formularies : it matters little even that men can be 
found who still imagine that they believe them. The 
true test and measure of their being believed, is the 
effects they produce ; and now, in England, their effects 
are ridiculous and suicidal. But still, as always, they 
are wholly intolerable ; subversive of liberty and honesty, 
in nation and individual, in conduct and thought. 

It is superfluous to ask whether they are believed. 
Some men partly believe them, and therefore they per¬ 
secute ; they rob Professor Jowett, for instance, as long 
as they are permitted, of some few hundreds a year. They 
refuse to pay to the Bishop of Natal his salary, because 
they really believe that that form of stealing is not so 
dangerous to the soul as heresy. But in England there 
are almost as many heretics as there are individuals, 
and nobody cares. No Anglican priest or bishop dare 
try to put in force the ecclesiastical canons of his own 
church. He might excommunicate and curse; and the 
only effect would he that men would laugh in his face. 


RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 


275 


He might refuse the sacraments ; but the clergyman of 
the next parish would administer them—and if a man 
could not get the sacraments at all he would contentedly 
go without them. Jews were burnt to death in olden 
times, now they have seats in Parliament. The orthodox 
marry and are given in marriage to heretics ; and the 
infidel who denies every one of the thirty-nine Articles, 
and repudiates the three creeds, is buried “ in sure and 
certain hope of a resurrection to eternal life.” It is 
more dangerous now to be a street beggar or an organ- 
grinder, than to be a heresiarch. “If it were a matter 
of wrong or wicked lewdness, 0 ye wrangling eccle¬ 
siastics, reason would that I should hear with you ; but 
if it be a question of words and names, and of your law, 
look ye to it, for I will be no judge of such matters.” 
So speaks that great Gallio, the spirit of the age, the 
Rationalism of modern Europe—and “ cares for none of 
these things.” 

The remaining chapters of Mr. Lecky’s hook are on 
“ The Secularization of Politics,” and “ The Industrial 
History of Rationalism.” So far are politics secularized 
that we almost fail to perceive that they ever needed 
secularizing. People now-a-days are annoyed at any 
attempt to connect religion with the ordinary affairs of 
the nation. Even the State Church exists on suffer¬ 
ance ; not by divine right, but by political expediency, 
and on condition of being the docile, submissive slave of 
the civil power. High Churchmen hate the alliance 
almost more bitterly than the dissenting sects ; knowing 
that they lose far more of spiritual strength and old 
ecclesiastical supremacy, than they gain of earthly 
splendour and possessions. The most utterly imbecile 
and absolutely powerless body in all England is the 

t 2 


276 


RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 


Convocation of the Clergy; a body that even to 
Henry VIII. could dare to suggest that if the laws of 
the Church and the laws of the State should unhappily 
he at variance, the laws of the State should be changed. 
The ecclesiastical courts, that were once the terror of 
the land, that w T ere more powerful and far more mer¬ 
ciless than the secular tribunals, are now the laughing¬ 
stock of the nation ; and it needs more courage to apply 
ecclesiastical law than to defy it. And yet the old 
system alone is compatible with the old theory upon 
which it was based, and which still lingers in words and 
formularies. The proof that the old belief is dead is 
not to be found in any verbal denial, any formal protest, 
but in the whole spirit and structure of modern life. 

Nor is the progress of Rationalism less obvious or less 
beneficial in its relation to commerce. The commercial 
spirit is the extreme opposite of the ascetic spirit. It 
is bent upon making life happy, and securing the utmost 
advantage of the things that are seen and temporal. It 
is opposed, on almost every side, to the mediaeval theo¬ 
logy, and must utterly perish if that theology should 
ever again prevail. Especially has it destroyed two of 
the prominent doctrines of the old religion—the doctrine 
of usury and the doctrine of almsgiving. Now% indeed, 
a vague distinction is drawn between usury and interest ; 
and so the attempt is made to save the credit of Jewish 
and Christian antiquity. But the distinction is in itself 
utterly delusive, and was, at any rate, entirely repudiated 
by the ancient church. Under the pressure of expanding 
commerce, one concession after another was obtained ; 
but each and all of them were completely inconsistent 
with the teaching of the fathers and the law of the 
church. Popes damned the usurer, hut kings borrowed 





RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 


277 


liis money ; and even tlie societies that were founded to 
render needless the ruinous assistance of pitiless money¬ 
lenders, were compelled to take interest under another 
name. The Church cursed the lender; the wiser world, 
when it cursed at all, cursed the borrower. The Church 
lauded recklessness and poverty, the world forethought 
and thrift. Loans being left more and more to the 
natural laws by which they are governed, were found to 
be beneficial and even necessary, though they might 
still be reckoned among mortal sins. They were tested 
by far other standards than obsolete texts of Scripture, 
and the grotesque absurdities of patristic logic. Men 
still may repudiate usury and affect to despise the world, 
but the new spirit is everywhere; and even churches 
themselves are often paid for by borrowed funds, and 
exist by the usury that was once punished with excom¬ 
munication, and threatened with the endless torments 
of hell. 

Political economy, moreover, has wholly subverted the 
ancient doctrine of “ charity,” and the mischievous 
custom of reckless almsgiving. It is no longer esteemed 
a virtue to open the doors of great houses of religion to 
every idle vagrant, and feed his insolence and dishonesty 
with the bread of God. To he needlessly poor is justly 
accounted a vice ; inasmuch as every man who does not 
keep himself must be compelling somebody else to keep 
him. The idler can live only by robbing the indus¬ 
trious ; either picking the pocket of the honest worker 
himself, or sending the tax gatherer to steal for him. 
The whole world is turned upside down; and it is not 
too much to say, that Rationalism has restored the 
Christianity which the mediaeval Church so nearly suc¬ 
ceeded in destroying. 


278 


RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 


For, after all, the Christianity of the mediaeval Church 
was not the Christianity of Christ. A lazy mendicant, 
swarming with vermin and loathsome with filth, is not 
the noblest fashion of man. Contempt of human nature 
is wholly incompatible with the fundamental doctrine 
even of the Church itself, the true humanity of the Son 
of God. Rationalism is hut the echo of Christ’s own 
words—“ To this end was I born, and for this cause 
came I into the world, that I might bear witness of the 
truth ; every man that is of the truth heareth my voice.” 
It is but the proving of all things, and the holding fast 
of that which is good. But, henceforth, it is dominant 
in Europe ; and what is not rational is doomed. Creeds, 
churches, Bibles, forms of government, modes of social 
' life, must henceforth justify themselves or depart else¬ 
whither. 

And when timid Christians look with horror on this 
huge giant striding through Europe, and wish that the 
days of unenquiring credulity could come back once 
more, we well might ask them at what point in the 
progress of free thought they would be willing to stop; 
or what reformation they would be able to justify. They 
could not justify dissent, nor the Reformation, for both 
were rationalistic. They could not justify the Bible, for 
it rests on the conviction that it is reasonable to expect 
that Almighty God will make some revelation of His 
will; and that the Bible does actually contain the record 
of that revelation. They could not rent a house, or buy 
a coat; for some part of the price is sure to be “ usury.” 
Their whole life would become one tangled mass of con¬ 
tradictions, from which nothing but Rationalism could 
possibly set them free. 

“ The bane and antidote are both before us.” While 


RATIONALISM IN EUROPE. 


279 


Mr. Lecky’s sheets were in the press, Dr. Newman was 
publishing the Apologia pro sna Vita. Most certainly 
this is not the ultimate hut a near alternative for every 
one of us—Reason or Rome. An infallible Bible must 
have an infallible church and infallible expounders. The 
Anglican “ via media ” is a road that leads only from 
one chaos to another. Authority, if we could only find 
it, might at least stun us. But surely there is some¬ 
thing better and nobler. Reason cannot he an accursed 
thing. And there is a living God to guide all earnest 
seekers into His own light. 
























































THE NEW REFORMATION. 



There are no doubt hundreds of thousands of very devout 
men and women in England, to whom the words, “ the 
New Reformation ,” will convey no sort of meaning. 
They have read or heard, that about three centuries ago, 
our forefathers arose in rebellion against Popish errors 
and superstitions ; they cast away the authority of the 
bishop of Rome, and instead of it they submitted 
themselves entirely to the guidance of the Holy 
Scriptures. Everything that could not stand the test of 
Scripture was abandoned, and from that time till the 
present, “ the Bible, and the Bible alone, is the religion 
of Protestants.” No doubt, especially among the dis¬ 
senting sects, there are many misgivings as to the 
accuracy and completeness with which the Scripture test 
was applied by the reformers, but the test itself is still 
accepted as both necessary and sufficient. Everything 
in the Bible is true; and though it may not be affirmed 
conversely that everything which cannot be found in the 
Bible is not true, yet, “ Holy Scripture containeth all 
things necessary to salvation, so that whatsoever is not 
read therein, nor may he proved thereby, is not to be 
required of any man that it should be believed as an 
article of the faith, or be thought requisite or necessary 
to salvation.” Now a reformation of a religion implies 



282 


THE NEW REFORMATION. 


that it has become so degenerate as to have forgotten, if 
one may so speak, the very principle upon which it is 
founded, the very idea which it exists to manifest. The 
religion of Protestants, for instance, would become thus 
degenerate if it abandoned the Scripture test, if it either 
derived or proved its doctrines from some other source. 
Merely to correct some misapplication of the test to 
prove for example that a particular form of the doctrine 
of election was not justified by texts of Scripture—would 
by no means be considered a reformation of Protestantism. 
But when a quiet Protestant hears anybody talk about a 
New Reformation, he either stares, in blank ignorance 
of the meaning, or he begins to shiver with horror; he 
experiences that creeping sensation which is supposed to 
indicate that somebody is walking over his grave. For 
if the words mean anything, they really must mean that 
the old Scripture test is to be abandoned ; that a doctrine 
may be scriptural and yet perhaps not true, or at any 
rate not necessary; or again, that some doctrine may be 
necessary and true which does not happen to be scrip¬ 
tural ; or, at all events, that the truth or necessity of a 
doctrine must be proved by its conformity, not to texts 
of Scripture, but to some other test. In fact, the attempt 
to bring religion back to its original principles which was 
made in the sixteenth century, and which was satisfied 
with an appeal to the Bible, is to be confessed unsuc¬ 
cessful ; and a new attempt must be made which will 
carry us beyond the Bible and carry the Bible itself along 
with us. 

It would therefore obviously be unfair not to admit, 
that when a Protestant feels a creeping sensation on 
hearing of a New Reformation, somebody is walking 
over his grave. It is quite impossible to over-estimate 


THE NEW REFORMATION. 


283 


the advantages which have arisen from the wide circula¬ 
tion of the Holy Scriptures, and the reverence with 
which their teaching has been received. The Bible is 
so immeasurably in advance of the general intelligence 
of mankind, that it may with the utmost advantage be 
accepted as a final court of appeal for all religious dis¬ 
putes by the vast majority of human beings. But even 
a final court of appeal does not exist by its own autho¬ 
rity. It is not competent to any odd number of men 
to constitute themselves the umpires for all creation, and 
to justify their decisions by the fact that they are 
self-constituted umpires. Courts of law are determined 
either by immemorial usage, or by statutes of the realm; 
and depend ultimately upon the intelligence and the 
conscience of a nation. It is beyond a doubt that if the 
judicial procedure of this country were found to be 
incompatible with impartial justice to all suitors it would 
at once be altered—or at any rate it would be altered as 
quickly as English people can be persuaded to alter any 
abuse. Anyhow, it is quite clearly understood that the 
judgment of a final court of appeal is decisive so long as 
the court itself exists, but that the court itself exists on 
sufferance, and only so long as it can justify itself to the 
conscience and intellect of the nation. 

Now it is exactly thus with the sacred Scriptures. As 
the great majority of suitors in courts of law know 
nothing whatever about the origin, or legal authority or 
procedure of the courts—simply doing what their soli¬ 
citors tell them they must do and abiding the result; so 
the vast majority of Protestants know next to nothing 
about the Bible. They have a vague notion that part of 
it was written in Hebrew, and. part in Greek; but 
thousands of them would never know they were being 


284 


THE NEW REFORMATION. 


laughed at if they were told that the hook Genesis was 
a translation into Greek out of Latin. They don’t 
know who wrote the different books of the Bible, nor 
when they were written. They know nothing at all 
about the Canon, nor why Ecclesiastes is Bible, and 
Ecclesiasticus is not. All they know is that if they go 
to a shop and ask for a Bible they get a certain book. 
Ecclesiastes is in it, and Ecclesiasticus is not in it, and 
that is quite enough for them. If they owed three 
pounds, and were indisposed to pay it, they would be 
summoned to the County Court; if they doubted the 
doctrine of “ election,” and were disinclined to believe 
it, they would be summoned to the Bible. The cases are 
almost exactly parallel. Both may be regarded, in a sense, 
as courts, but the majority of people do not know in either 
case why they are courts, or whether they ought to be 
courts at all. At the same time this ignorance does not 
prevent an enormous amount of good. The County Court 
is a most useful institution; and the Bible, in all that 
is essential, commends itself to every man’s conscience 
in the sight of God. But nevertheless it is becoming 
more and more widely recognised that the Scriptures 
themselves must be tested. A reasonable man can 
hardly be expected to direct his wdiole life, and govern 
even his desires by a particular book, simply because it 
is labelled “Holy Bible.” Moreover, the world swarms 
with Bibles ; and even where the doctrines and legends 
of a religion have not been collected into one book or 
set of books, they might have been so collected in the 
old times, and they might even be so collected now. It 
is quite easy, for example, to determine what was the 
theology or mythology of the ancient Greeks. Ingenious 
essays have been written upon the theology of the 


THE NEW REFORMATION. 285 

Homeric poems; and Mr. Gladstone has studied the 
character and offices of Athene with immeasurably more 
patience and care than most Protestant divines have 
devoted to the Virgin Mary. And of course if no theo¬ 
logical dogmas are to be regarded as authoritative, we 
may fairly admit that there is a certain amount of truth 
in every religion ; that even dumb idols, wood and stone, 
the work of men’s hands, are images of divine realities. 
We can all of us join in Pope’s “ Universal Prayer ”— 

“ Father of All! in every age, 

In every clime adored, 

By saint, by savage, and by sage, 

Jehovah, Jove, or Lord ! 

“ To Thee whose temple is all space 
Whose altar, earth, sea, skies ! 

One chorus let all being raise 
All Nature’s incense rise ! ” 

But the great temple of the Eternal is not a pantheon; 
and anybody clearly perceiving and understanding what 
has been revealed to us concerning Jehovah, will find it 
exceedingly hard to bow down and worship Jove. 
Which then is which ? How long halt ye between two 
opinions ? If Jehovah he God, follow him ; but if Baal, 
then follow him. And which of these shall we follow ? 
If it were right for human beings to decide so grave a 
question by their mere prejudices, then every form of 
error would be everlasting. Considering how closely 
body and spirit are united, it may be affirmed without 
even a metaphor that every child takes in its religion 
with its mother’s milk. We send out our missionaries 
to urge the heathen to overcome their prejudices; and 
Protestant devotees are constantly labouring to overcome 
the prejudices of the Papists. We are, even as a religious 


286 


THE NEW REFORMATION. 


duty, continually bringing every form of religion except 
our own to some external test. The New Reformation 
requires us to bring our own religion to a test. 

The foundation of the New Reformation is Ration¬ 
alism. 

Of course the great majority of devout Christians in 
England wholly disbelieve this. They believe that no 
reformation is necessary. They believe that no refor¬ 
mation is in progress. They believe that Rationalism 
would not reform, but would, if it could, destroy the 
Christian religion. In like manner, in the reign of 
Henry the Eighth the Anglican bishops believed that 
no reformation was necessary, and they were completely 
unaware of the fact that a great reformation was in 
progress. “ Truth it is,” they said, in that madness 
wherewith God visits men whom He has purposed to 
destroy, “that certain apostates, friars, monks, lewd 
priests, bankrupt merchants, vagabonds, and lewd, idle 
fellows of corrupt intent, have embraced the abominable 
and corrupt opinions lately sprung in Germany ; and by 
them some have been seduced in simplicity and igno¬ 
rance. Against these, if judgment has been exercised 
according to the laws of the Church, and conformably to 
the laws of the realm, we be without blame. If we have 
been too remiss, and slack, we shall gladly do our duty 
from henceforth.” Exactly. And the bishops of our 
day are quite satisfied in their own minds that they are 
far too slack and remiss in punishing “ those corrupt 
opinions lately sprung in Germany.” They would do far 
more if they could, but alas—so much are times changed 
—a bishop is but a dummy; other people play his cards 
for him, and everybody knows what his next move will 
be. Henry the Eighth’s bishops were quietly digging 


THE NEW REFORMATION. 


287 


tlieir own graves, and all the while they fancied that they 
were digging out the room for the foundation of their 
own greatness. It is not a little pathetic to meditate 
upon the end of these men. Some of them went to the 
axe, and almost all the rest of them to the land where 
nothing is remembered. There is a reformation in pro¬ 
gress now. The old landmarks are being removed, the 
old tests superseded; and the great majority of English 
Christians know absolutely nothing about it. 

What is this Rationalism then, which is the very 
principle of the New Reformation ? There is scarcely a 
word in the English language which more needs to 
he explained, and so to be delivered from those slovenly, 
market place interpretations which have rendered Ration¬ 
alism itself a horror to the majority of Christian men. 
For even people who ought to know better are constantly 
speaking and writing as if Rationalism were a set of 
doctrines ; and what those doctrines are they seek to 
ascertain by examining the writings of all those who have 
either called themselves, or been called by others, Ration¬ 
alists. Unfortunately a small number of thoughtful 
men have totally repudiated the Christian religion. 
Carefully considering the existing Christian Church, 
with its innumerable battling sects, and opposing dogmas, 
with its long history, too, so full of cruelty and fraud, 
with its political relations, and unrighteous monopolies— 
they have come to the conclusion that the system which 
bears such fruit as we find even in our own day in Rome 
and Ireland, must assuredly be both mischievous and 
false. They have therefore separated themselves from 
the Christian society, as such, and have denounced both 
the Church and the clergy; sometimes violently, with 
fierce accusations of knavery and pride—sometimes con- 


288 


THE NEW REFORMATION. 


temptuously, with scornful pity for the ignorant and 
beguiled. Again, they have examined the Christian 
literature, the books which contain a record of those 
facts upon which the Christian Church professes to be 
founded. They have concluded, for reasons more or less 
satisfactory, that the majority of these books are far less 
ancient than they are commonly supposed to be. They 
have carefully criticised the various texts of the original. 
They have cut out large portions of the New Testament 
hooks which they supposed to be interpolations. In a 
word, they leave us exceedingly few of the New Testa¬ 
ment books, as belonging in any proper sense to the 
apostolic age ; and then, judging those few fragments 
that remain by modern science and modern philosophy, 
they cut out as wholly unbelievable everything tliat is 
miraculous or supernatural. In this way the whole of 
Christianity vanishes. The history itself being de¬ 
stroyed, the lessons which that history, if it had been 
true, would have taught us, perish also. 

In many cases there is not the slightest reason to 
suppose that the men who have arrived at such conclu¬ 
sions as these—most unfortunate and unjustifiable as 
I believe those conclusions to be—were in the smallest 
degree dishonest or hostile to Christianity itself. They 
refused to believe the Christian dogmas, and the Chris¬ 
tian narratives, because in fact they were unable to 
believe them. Employing a certain method of investi¬ 
gation and proof, and employing that method only to a 
certain extent, their repudiation of the Christian religion 
was simply inevitable. Moreover, he must be a strange 
moralist, and a much stranger Christian, who can hesi¬ 
tate to prefer the honesty of unbelief to the hypocrisy of 
faith. 


THE NEW REFORMATION. 


289 


But it by no means follows, tliat because certain 
individuals, making an honest, and as they believed 
complete, use of their own reason in the investigation of 
those matters, which unquestionably demand from every 
one of us the most careful and conscientious attention, 
arrived at certain conclusions, those conclusions them¬ 
selves must necessarily follow from every application of 
human reason to the facts and doctrines of Christianity. 
In a word, a man may be a rationalist, but his par¬ 
ticular creed, or even his no-creed, can by no means 
constitute Rationalism itself. 

The absurdity and injustice of attempting to identify 
Rationalism with all the various and contradictory con¬ 
clusions at which rationalists have arrived, is easily per¬ 
ceived when a similar injustice is attempted to the injury 
of Christianity or Protestantism. What would be thought 
of the man who should make a collection of all the oddities 
that have ever been produced by Christian writers, call 
the whole mass of nonsense the Christian religion, and 
forthwith begin to ridicule it as an obsolete absurdity ? 
No doubt it is very easy to arrive at such a state of mind 
that a man may think himself the only real Christian 
in all the world. “Est lisec periculosa tentatio,” says 
Calvin, “ nullam ecclesiam putare ubi non appareat 
perfecta puritas. Nam quicunque hac occupatus fuerit 
necesse tandem erit ut discessione ab aliis omnibus facta 
solus sibi sanctus videatur in mundo, aut peculiarem 
sectam cum hypocritis instituat.” But history refuses 
to recognise that one man who is the only saint in all 
the world ; nor will common sense excommunicate all 
the rest of Christendom, in order that the communion 
of saints may be monopolised by a little handful of 
hypocrites. So long therefore as English words retain 

u 


290 


THE NEW REFORMATION. 


their meaning, people will be called Christians and will 
quite rightly be called Christians who differ from each 
other in almost all conceivable ways, and who agree only 
in this—that the form of their religion has been deter¬ 
mined by the advent of Jesus Christ. Some Christians 
then affirm, and others deny, the doctrine of the 
Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the necessity of the 
sacraments, justification by faith, a vicarious atonement, 
the everlasting torment of those who die impenitent. 
Inasmuch as there can be no sort of compromise between 
flat yes and no, it must be perfectly plain that these 
affirmations and denials are mutually exclusive. If 
therefore Christianity itself were identified with the doc¬ 
trines held by Christians, then Christianity itself would 
be a mass of absurdity no better than the senseless 
jabbering of an idiot. But every Christian can under¬ 
stand how excessively unjust such a caricature of his 
religion would be. He would say at once, “ All these 
absurdities that you try to fasten upon me and upon my 
religion I utterly disclaim and abhor. My religion 
rests upon certain facts. It matters nothing to me that 
certain individuals have attempted to account for those 
facts in a foolish way, or to deduce from those facts, in 
defiance of all true logic, false conclusions ; the facts 
themselves are the common property of mankind. More¬ 
over, being facts, they are quite unalterable; but the 
doctrines or practices which individuals may deduce 
from those facts are utterly incalculable, and will be wise 
or foolish according to the wisdom or the folly of each 
separate thinker.” 

In like manner the natural gifts, and the culture of 
individual thinkers, differ almost infinitely. Every human 
being, simply because he is a human being, is possessed 


THE NEW REFORMATION. 


291 


of senses, intellect, emotions, will, is in fact a reason¬ 
able being; and moreover his nature is such that he 
cannot fail to recognise that reason is his dominant 
faculty, and that to act in defiance of reason is to throw 
away the very glory which distinguishes him from the 
beasts. Sensual gratifications, stormy passions, rash 
resolves, undisciplined, ill-regulated conduct; all this is 
inhuman, exactly because it is unreasonable. Nay, more, 
there is something higher in man than the intellect, 
and there is a use of intellectual power, cleverness, skill, 
which has been called vulpine—the craftiness of the fox 
—a cleverness beastly, not human. But when a man, 
urged on by this dominant faculty of his nature, begins 
like the boy Jesus in the temple, to ask questions; 
when moreover he begins to find out that learned 
doctors are much more astonished at his questions 
than able to answer them, when in a word he realizes 
that he must himself find the answers for his own 
questions ; he then also begins to perceive how slender 
are the materials at his command, how little fit he 
is to enter upon an inquiry which seems to stretch out 
broader and further at every step of his advance. Each 
fresh solution of a difficulty seems to suggest a new 
difficulty to be solved, till the inquirer becomes over 
wearied and disheartened— 

“ For here, forlorn and lost, I tread, 

With fainting steps and slow, 

Where wilds immeasurably spread 
Seem lengthening as I go.” 

The inquirer is urged forward by his imperious reason, 
while at every turning crowds of guides offer him their 
services, and bewilder him with contradictory advice. 

u 2 


292 


THE NEW REFORMATION. 


There are religions which claim his submission because 
they are old, and there are religions which claim his 
submission because they arethe newest birth of time— 
the ripest fruit of all the thought, and even of all the 
mistakes, of nearly a score of centuries. He becomes 
half stifled by the press and crow r d of those who would 
be only too pleased to relieve him altogether of the re¬ 
sponsibility of being a reasonable creature. He watches 
them, and he sees the different religions, like porters at 
a wharf, snatching hold of each new comer, seizing his 
luggage, and hurrying him off up steep steps or narrow 
passages, but above all getting him quite out of the 
reach of all the other porters. The inquirer, like a 
tormented passenger just landed from a steam-packet, 
is apt to get savage, and to say to some ticket-porter 
religion, “ Just put my box down and leave me to my¬ 
self for a minute or two. Who on earth are you, to be 
seizing everything I’ve got in the world, and tearing off 
into some dark passage with it ? You are very likely 
the most honest ticket-porter in all the world; but then, 
on the other hand, you may be a drunken old thief, and 
any how I’ll just keep my box in my own possession.” 
Very likely the newly-arrived passenger may make a 
mistake after all, and fall a prey to some sleek old 
hypocrite with an honest-looking face. And so a man 
in search for truth, and especially religious truth, may 
make a thousand mistakes; but at any rate he is a 
seeker, not led away without some reason or proof by 
the first theory that offers itself. 4 ‘As far as I can see 
at present,” he says to some form of religion, “ you are 
true ; I therefore give myself up to you. God has told 
me, broadly, generally, what I ought to do and what I 
ought to avoid. It seems to me that you are simply 


THE NEW REFORMATION. 


293 


applying, in all the minute details of life, these great 
principles; I therefore submit myself to you, because I 
think I have good reason for it; because, so far as I 
can see now, my whole nature feels the need of you. 
But if I find hereafter that, instead of applying to all 
the details of life the grand divine principles of morality, 
you somehow contradict them ; if you begin to teach me 
that those very principles are themselves delusive, and, 
above all, if you require me to do dishonour to that 
imperial reason which first taught me my spiritual 
necessities, and then seemed to tell me that you could 
satisfy them, I shall know that I was wholly mistaken 
about you, I shall be quite certain that reason itself, the 
sovereign lord of all my faculties, can never have com¬ 
manded me to become guilty of treason. I shall know 
that you are, in fact, not a religion at all, hut a gloomy, 
inhuman, demoralizing superstition.” Unfortunately 
the majority of so-called religions are inhuman super¬ 
stitions ; and rationalists are to be found in every one 
of them, feeling their w T ay to something higher and 
better. And there are great systems of denial wdiich 
are as inhuman and demoralizing as the grossest super¬ 
stitions ; and among them also are rationalists to he 
found, seeking light and life. But Kationalism itself 
is neither disbelief nor credulity ; it is not any one of 
the innumerable, irreconcilable results at wdiich ration¬ 
alists have arrived. It is a method, a principle, a 
human right, a solemn spiritual duty. 

The Christian religion presents itself to men some¬ 
times as a system of dogmas, sometimes as a social 
organization, sometimes as a form of personal goodness. 
In other words, the appearance of Christ among men 
implied certain facts about God and about men, and 


294 


THE NEW REFORMATION. 


about the relations between them, which, when expressed 
in verbal propositions, are the simplest doctrines of the 
Christian creed. So, again, the sort of life which Jesus 
Christ lived in the world ; His self-sacrificing love, the 
divine readiness with which He helped all who were in 
need, the gentle affection which He seemed to have 
power to shed into the hearts of all who came into 
contact with Him, His wonderful power to unite His 
followers into a brotherhood ; all this lies at the foun¬ 
dation of the Christian Church. Once more, the perfect 
beauty of Christ’s own goodness, the searching subtlety 
of His morality, the spirit and truth of everything He 
taught, brings every human being who knows anything 
m about it face to face with the great mystery of His own 
responsibility. If I am. to believe what Jesus Christ 
taught by word or by life, if I am to become a member 
of a society founded upon self-sacrifice, then I must 
myself be what Jesus Christ was. Christianity, there¬ 
fore, may be called the highest form of human life. 

Rationalism also may be expressed as a doctrine; it 
may be the foundation of a society; it may be a law of 
human conduct. As a doctrine, Rationalism may be 
expressed somewhat thus :—There is truth for men to 
know, there are in human nature all necessary faculties 
for arriving at the knowledge of it, there is supplied to 
every man some mode of contact between his own spirit 
and the truth. As a law of human conduct, Rationalism 
may be expressed somewhat thus:—Whenever your spirit 
is brought into contact with what professes to be truth, 
make the most careful use of all those faculties which 
are included in your human nature, in order that you 
may ascertain whether it is really truth or not. If you 
find that it is not truth, cast it away. If you find that 


THE NEW REFORMATION. 


295 


it is truth, submit yourself to it without reserve, with 
perfect loyalty of thought and act; and whatever it may 
cost you, obey truth with your whole being. As the 
foundation of a society, nationalism may be expressed 
somewliat thus :—Inasmuch as there is truth for men to 
know, inasmuch as there are in human nature all ne¬ 
cessary faculties for arriving at the knowledge of it; in¬ 
asmuch as there is supplied to every man some mode of 
contact between his own spirit and the truth; and again, 
inasmuch as whenever our spirits are brought into con¬ 
tact with what professes to be the truth, w r e ought to 
make the most careful use of all those faculties which 
are included in our human nature in order that we may 
ascertain wdietlier it is really truth or not, to cast away 
w r hat w r e find to be false, and to obey the truth with our 
whole power ; we, therefore, jointly and severally devote 
ourselves to the pursuit of truth, and pledge ourselves 
to obey it. The condition of communion with us shall 
be sincerity and earnestness; and they only shall be 
excommunicated from our fellowship who will not seek 
for truth, or who will not acknowledge and obey it. 

If this be at all a fair account of Rationalism, it is quite 
obvious that it cannot be identified with any particular 
set of doctrines, much less with mere denials. For 
anybody to say, therefore, that Rationalism is the denial 
of Christianity, or the rejection of the Bible, or anything 
of that sort, is a culpable misrepresentation of Ration¬ 
alism. I don't know how to test a matter of this sort 
so well as by bringing it to a personal issue. Strauss 
and Renan, for instance, are rationalists ; and it is not 
misrepresenting their belief to say that they deny the 
historical veracity of the four gospels. On the contrary, 
there are very many rationalists w r ho—in my judgment, 


296 


THE NEW EEFOEMATION. 


with tlie best possible reason—regard the history con¬ 
tained in the four gospels as the best authenticated 
history in all literature. But neither the denial nor the 
acceptance of the gospel history constitutes Rationalism. 
The man is a rationalist who, knowing that what is 
called the Christian religion professes to be completely 
true, determines to test it by what many people would 
call his own reason. The Christian religion is contained 
partly in hooks ; he will therefore examine the books, 
and subject them to all the tests by which written lan¬ 
guage can he tried. It is partly a morality, and he will 
therefore test the Christian precepts by his own con¬ 
science, and by those moral judgments which have been 
accepted by the general conscience of mankind. The 
Christian religion appeals to himself as a human being; 
he will therefore ascertain whether or not it adapts itself 
to his human nature. The result of all this examination 
will depend very much upon the individual by whom it 
is conducted. But, whatever the result may he, it will be 
always open to revision; and if it denies too much, or if 
it affirms too much, the error may hereafter be corrected. 

There are two popular antitheses which require a 
somewhat careful examination. The antithesis between 
reason and faith, and the antithesis between reason 
and revelation. The first of these may be expanded 
into the following propositions :—‘ In religion there are 
very many things that we can understand, there are very 
many other things that we cannot understand. Those 
things that we can understand are capable of certain 
kinds of proof, but those things that we cannot under¬ 
stand are strictly speaking capable of no prooi whatever. 
We ascertain the one by reason, the other by faith.’ 
Now thi sort of antithesis is, to speak plainly, wholly 


THE NEW REFORMATION. 


297 


unintelligible. The word faith has more meanings than 
one, but not one of those meanings will justify its oppo¬ 
sition to reason. There seem, in truth, to be strictly 
speaking only three meanings to this word. It may 
mean either belief; or trust in a person; or the accept¬ 
ance of some provisional hypothesis, which may be a 
satisfactory explanation of facts, and which is accepted 
for the sake of ascertaining whether it is a satisfactory 
explanation or not. In this last sense, it is true enough 
that we must believe before we can know; but our belief 
is always liable to revision, adopted for the very sake of 
being verified, and abandoned if we cannot justify it. 
When by faith we mean belief, it is admitted at once 
that such a faith can never be directly produced by any 
act of our own will. We may indeed exclude from our 
attention certain portions of necessary evidence. We 
may, as it were, keep opposing witnesses out of court; 
and by never hearing what they say, escape the effect 
which their testimony might have upon us. But if we 
do hear what they have to say, we cannot possibly escape 
the effect of their testimony. No human being who is 
capable of understanding, and who actually does under¬ 
stand the terms employed, can possibly examine the 
fifth proposition of Euclid, and then refuse to believe 
that the angles at the base of an isosceles triangle are 
equal. He may refuse to confess that he believes it; 
he may, in fact, tell as many lies as he likes; but when¬ 
ever a sufficient amount of the fitting kind of evidence 
is produced, belief follows necessarily, inevitably. And, 
in like manner, when the necessary amount and kind of 
evidence is wholly wanting, belief cannot possibly follow. 
But, so far as faith is identical with belief, it will scarcely 
be pretended that it can be a virtue to separate faith 


298 


THE NEW REFORMATION. 


from reason. To believe without evidence is 'prejudice. 
It has in every age been regarded as a most mischievous 
folly. Moreover, in religion it is and always has been 
at the root of the most pestilent superstitions. Inas¬ 
much, too, as prejudice has a negative as well as a 
positive side, seeing it is quite as easy for a person to 
believe without knowing why that something is not true, 
as to believe that something else is ,—it has always been 
the great obstacle in the way of every kind of Keforma- 
tion. Faith, then, when it is identical with belief, has 
to do -with propositions. But propositions affirm certain 
relations between the things signified by their terms. 
It is perfectly obvious, therefore, that no honest man 
in his senses can pretend to believe a proposition that 
he doesnT understand. He may utter it, he may write 
it down on paper and sign his name at the end of it; 
he may admit the possibility of its being true ; he may 
admit the fact, if it be a fact, that hundreds of other 
people know what it means, and know that what it pre¬ 
dicates is true. But no amount of ingenuity, no con¬ 
ceivable intensity of desire, no solemn sense of duty, no 
dread of the consequences of uncertainty or denial, can 
attach belief to a proposition the terms of which are 
unintelligible. It is very likely that those queer marks 
one sees on tea-chests are propositions in the Chinese 
language; but what would be thought of an Englishman 
who, knowing nothing whatever of Chinese, should 
simply point to two or three sets of black marks on a 
tea-chest, and imagine it a great achievement of virtue 
to believe them. Not only is belief apart from reason 
not the highest Christian excellence, but belief apart 
from reason is either insanity or a vice. 

Nor can reason be separated from faith, when faith 


THE NEW REFORMATION. 


299 


means trust in a person. Trust in persons, indeed, 
apart from reason, would place all the industry and 
virtue of a community at the mercy of knaves and vaga¬ 
bonds. It is no doubt wise, and even necessary, to 
trust a man until we find out that he is untrustworthy ; 
but the reason why we trust an unknown stranger is 
that we already possess so much knowledge of human 
nature, of the virtues and vices of mankind, and of the 
probable loss or gain of any punishable impropriety of 
conduct, that we know it is more likely that a perfect 
stranger does not intend to injure us than that he does. 
But reason is far higher than trust in a person. Indeed, 
trust is but one mode of reason, one of its innumerable 
manifestations, and distrust is another. There would 
be no glory or honour in trust, if distrust were never 
right and wise ; and a man who trusts everybody without 
knowing why, may very possibly be a saint, but very 
certainty is a fool. 

But if faith, when it is identical with belief, depends 
upon reason; and if faith, when' it means trust in a 
person, depends upon reason; it is scarcely likely that 
it means the very opposite of reason, when it depends 
upon a combination of both. No conceivable amount 
of trust in a person can enable anybody to believe a pro¬ 
position whose terms are unintelligible. I will not 
shrink from suggesting the very highest illustration of 
what I mean. I can conceive of nothing more com¬ 
pletely justified by reason than entire confidence in 
Jesus Christ. But if Jesus Christ Himself were to utter 
certain words which conveyed to us no meaning what¬ 
ever, or words which formed a contradictory and im¬ 
possible proposition—such for instance as the words 
one is three —and ask us to believe them, we should be 


800 


THE NEW REFORMATION. 


bound to speak tlie truth ; and we should he compelled 
therefore to say something about equivalent to this— 
“ We do not the least understand what these words 
mean. So far as we do understand them, they seem to 
affirm that a thing is and is not at the same time. We 
are perfectly certain that what you say to us is true; and 
if you tell us that these words, which we know nothing 
whatever about, affirm something that you know to be 
true, we have no sort of doubt that they do. When you 
tell us what the words mean, we shall be very likely not 
only to believe you, but from our very knowledge to believe 
that which the words affirm. Meanwhile, though we per¬ 
fectly trust in you, it is impossible for us to believe or dis¬ 
believe what it is quite out of our power to understand.” 

There is yet another sense in wdiich the word faith 
may be used, and used legitimately, but even in that 
sense faith requires the justification of reason. We 
know, for instance, that God is good ; and yet the world 
is so full of mysteries of misery that we scarcely know 
how in the midst of all such sorrow there can be an all- 
powerful Good governing the world. Now, in the midst of 
all the mysteries of life, the conclusions of faith will, as it 
were, outrun their premisses—affirming more than has 
been really proved, though more of the same kind. I 
know no nobler expression of such a faith as this in 
all modern literature than we have in“In Memoriam.” 

“ The wish, that of the living whole 
No life may fail heyoncl the grave, 

Derives it not from what we have 
The likest God, within the soul ? 

“ Are God and Nature then at strife 

That N ature lends such evil dreams ? 

So careful of the type she seems, 

So careless of the single life; 


THE NEW REFORMATION. 


801 


“ That I, considering everywhere, 

Her secret meaning in her deeds, 

And finding that of fifty seeds 
She often brings but one to bear, 

“ I falter where I firmly trod, 

And falling with my weight of cares 
Upon the great world's altar stairs 
That slope through darkness up to God, 

“ I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope 
And gather dust and chaff, and call 
To what I feel is Lord of All, 

And faintly trust the larger hope.” 

But it is surely plain that faith of this sort cannot be 
separated from reason. There is a love of God that 
passeth knowledge ; and we at least know this, that we 
have never ourselves been able to exhaust the knowledge 
of the love of God, and to say—“ Now there is nothing 
fresh to learn about this.” We may therefore assume 
that in the infinite love of God there is some solution 
for all those difficulties which are unquestionably serious 
enough to embarrass our consciences, but are by no 
means of a kind to destroy or contradict what we 
actually know about God Himself. 

But when faith is contrasted with reason it means 
credulity, it means treason. It means—not belief 
justified by evidence, nor trust in a person justified by 
what we know about him—but blind confidence in some 
vague and useless abstraction—such, for instance, as 
the 4 ‘ Catholic Church,” or the “ Anglican Church,” or 
the unknown individuals who form the popular opinion 
about the Sacred Scriptures. The Boman Catholic 
Church, for instance, affirms that the Scriptures declare 
that the substance of the consecrated bread in the 
Eucharist becomes the substance of the body of Christ. 


302 


THE NEW REFORMATION* 


The Anglican Church affirms the contrary of this ; hut, 
on the other hand, it incorporates into its liturgy the 
•creed commonly called the creed of St. Athanasius. 
We are expected to believe these, and other dogmas, 
not because we understand them, nor because we ever 
meet with anybody who does understand them, but 
simply because somebody or other tells us that we 
ought to believe them, and that the less we understand 
them the greater is the merit of our belief. I do not 
mean by this to deny either of these dogmas ; nor, on 
the contrary, do I mean to affirm them. But, assuredly, 
if the doctrine of the Trinity, for instance, could justify 
itself neither to any separate part, nor to the whole, of 
my human faculties, it is superfluous to say that I 
should reject it—the plain fact is, that it would he 
impossible for me to accept it. There is therefore no 
contradiction, no sort of opposition between reason and 
faith. Faith itself is a mode of reason, and the man 
who has no reason is incapable of faith. 

The other antithesis—between reason and revelation— 
is even much sillier than the antithesis between reason 
and faith. Of course, reason and revelation are different 
things, and so are the human eye and the visible 
world. But things that are different are by no means 
mutually exclusive. Indeed, reason and revelation are 
so far from being mutually exclusive that each implies 
the other; for revelation is neither more nor less than 
the uncovering of hidden truth in order that reason may 
apprehend it; and reason is that very faculty in man 
which apprehends truth in whatever way it made be 
made known to him. Every revelation of God, however, 
is a fact either in the external world, or in the inmost 
experience of an individual, or in both together; and 


THE NEW REFORMATION. 


308 


the opposition between reason and revelation is just as 
stupid as the opposition between the eye and the external 
world. In any single act of vision the visible object 
and the power of vision are necessary factors; and he 
will be able to say which is most important, reason or 
revelation, who can tell us whether the factor four or the 
factor five is most necessary to the production of the 
product twenty. 

At the same time, the antithesis between reason and 
revelation is so often repeated, and with so much of 
absurd exposition and illustration on both sides, that 
it becomes necessary to show that Rationalism is by 
no means opposed to what is called revealed religion. 
There are many doctrines, and there are many narratives, 
which any impartial inquirer would certainly reject; 
but he w r ould reject them exactly because he could find 
no reason to believe that they have been really revealed. 
For, surely, the truth of a doctrine can scarcely be said 
to be revealed if the human mind has been furnished 
with a complete disproof of its truth. The question is 
very often asked, Will any rationalist venture to affirm 
that human reason could have worked out for itself such 
a religion as the religion of Christ ? But why not put 
the question on a lower ground, where, perhaps, we may 
be in less danger of irreverence ; and where, at any rate, 
we may seek for an answer without exasperating those 
hateful prejudices which infest the whole domain of 
theology ? We might ask, Could the unaided human 
reason have worked out for itself such a science as 
chemistry ? Or, we might ask again, Could the unaided 
human eye have produced for itself those facts which 
are at the base of the science of optics ? The answer 
is, of course, negative; but a negative answer by no 


304 


THE NEW REFORMATION. 


means disproves the value or the necessity either of the 
eye or of the reason. Chemistry is the result of the 
application of the reason to a certain set of phenomena; 
and for the knowledge of those facts which are at the 
base of the science of optics there must be an external 
world to see, and an eye to see it with. It would justly 
be considered in the highest degree absurd to contend 
that reason has nothing to do with chemistry, because 
the elements and their compounds and the laws of their 
combination are independent of the mind by which they 
are perceived. And in religion it is equally absurd 
to disparage reason because Almighty God, and human 
beings, and their relations to each other, and the 
separate historical facts by which these have been 
manifested, are also independent of the perceiving mind. 
If God is to be known, the knower and the knowable 
are equally necessary. 

The natural history of religion is always an interesting 
object of inquiry, and might, doubtless, be useful if it 
were not for an almost complete absence of any trust¬ 
worthy materials out of which such a history might be 
constructed. The Bible narrative of the genesis of the 
human race and its earliest history is of the highest 
value, even though it should be impossible to regard it 
as historically true. There is the deepest moral necessity 
for our regarding every sort of evil as a departure from 
the divine ideal; and, at any rate, each one of us, in 
his own experience, is conscious, not only of a fall, but 
of a long series of falls. It is not therefore wonderful 
that this universal experience should have been repre¬ 
sented in the form of a concrete fact, and transferred to 
the earliest period of the history of mankind. But 
even in the Bible narrative we scarcely pass outside the 


THE NEW REFORMATION. 


305 


garden of Eden without coming into contact with the 
stern realities which remind us that the Divine purpose 
is working itself out at once by the aid and by the 
opposition of the dependent will of men. We have 
scarcely heard the “ very good” of the Divine Worker 
before we hear a murdered brother’s blood crying to 
God from the ground. The inestimable superiority of 
the sacred history is this—that it is no bare record of 
the ambition and the crimes of men, but that human 
conduct is continually tested by those great moral prin¬ 
ciples which are always far in advance of actual life, and 
which are themselves continually purified by widening 
experience and deepening thought. The dawn of history, 
whether we find it in the Bible or anywhere else, exhibits 
man to us, as in the majority utterly debased, sunk in com¬ 
plete barbarism ,* with here and there nobler spirits, not 
only themselves fighting with evil, but seeking to raise 
other people to their own level. Indeed, we see what is so 
often and so unjustly disparaged, man working out a 
religion for himself—that is to say, availing himself of 
all those external facts, and of that knowledge of him¬ 
self, through which God has made it possible for men to 
recognise His existence, and His character, and His 
government of the world. 

There are, at least, two conceivable modes in which 
God might make His existence, and government, and 
character known to men. It is conceivable, that in some 
direct manner, by some appeal partly even to the senses, 
He might reveal Himself to His creatures. It is noto¬ 
rious that the earliest literature of almost all ages is 
full of supposed instances of this kind of revelation. 
In like manner, we read in the Old Testament how 
three men appeared before the tent of Abraham, and 

x 


806 


THE NEW REFORMATION. 


conversed with him ; and it is borne in upon his soul 
that he is conversing with the Eternal Himself, and 
listening to the very voice of God. Again, a burning 
hush attracts the notice of Moses in the desert; and as 
he turns to look why the hush still burns, but is not 
consumed, he is aware of the presence of Jehovah, and 
receives from Him his commission to he the deliverer of 
the children of Israel. It is, of course, conceivable that 
in any number of cases, and even in all cases where 
spiritual guidance is required, Almighty God might 
reveal His will to His creatures in a similar manner. 
There might he an audible voice, with certain unmis- 
takeable tokens that it was not the voice of man, nor the 
product of a vivid imagination, but verily and truly the 
voice of God. 

It is, however, perfectly certain that this mode of 
revelation, even if a single genuine instance of it can be 
found in all history, is in the highest degree exceptional; 
and can have had a special value, if at all, only to those 
very few persons who were the direct recipients of it. 
Abraham may have had no doubt whatever that he had 
seen and spoken with God; and that, in some myste¬ 
rious way, “the three men” were verily “the Lord.” 
But as a visible appearance of the Infinite Spirit is in 
the highest degree improbable; as there is an obvious 
confusion even in the very narrative itself of this won¬ 
drous manifestation ; and, as nothing is more likely than 
that the firm belief that Abraham had in the constant 
presence of God, and His willingness to receive the earnest 
prayers of His people, should have taken some outward 
shape; we may well recognise the truth of what 
Abraham is said to have received from God Himself, 
without at all committing ourselves to the belief that 


THE NEW REFORMATION. 307 

this truth was imparted to him in the mode which he 
himself supposed. It is certainly true, that the secret 
of the Lord is with all them who fear Him; and also, 
that this secret can be revealed to them without any 
such sensible manifestations as -we read of in the 
history of Abraham. It is also revealed to us—that is 
to say, it is made plain to us—that the Ruler of the 
world is continually, so to speak, doing His utmost to 
prevent the necessity of destroying or making miserable 
His own creatures. In all sorts of ways is God 
answering the earnest prayers of His people “ that He 
will not destroy the city even for ten’s sake.” But all 
this revelation is brought to us, not by three men at a 
tent door, but by the long lessons of history, the healing 
processes "which are at work both in nature and in 
society, and the power of forgiveness and self-sacrifice 
that we find in our own hearts. Assuming even that 
the narrative in the eighteenth chapter of Genesis was 
furnished originally in one form or another by Abraham 
himself, we shall, nevertheless, be hound to receive its 
moral and spiritual lessons rather in defiance of their 
startling supernatural accompaniments than by the help 
of them. Those lessons are indisputably true, and 
therefore, like everything else which is good and true, are 
from God; but as to the mystery of the relation 
between “ the three men ” and “ the Lord,” we have no 
materials out of which it is possible for us to form a 
judgment. It will scarcely be affirmed that Rationalism 
is incompatible with the belief in the existence of a 
God ; and, if we believe in a loving God at all, we cannot 
wonder that Abraham realized His presence, and that 
he should have been specially conscious of His presence 
and guidance in all the most serious crises of his life. 

x 2 


308 


THE NEW REFORMATION. 


It is impossible that he can have failed to connect with 
the divine government and character the frightful degra¬ 
dation of the cities of the plain, and the sure and terrible 
judgment that such moral degeneracy was hurrying on. 
It is likely enough that three visitors talking to him at 
his tent, and then passing on to those very cities, may 
have wrought on his mind a solemn fear and an earnest 
cry to God for help and mercy. But it is this—this 
clear assertion of God’s righteousness, this firm hope 
in God’s mercy, this recognition of the indissoluble 
bond by which vice and ruin are fastened together—it 
is this which commends the revelation to our reason 
and conscience, whatever may have been the mode in 
which these truths were first made known to Abraham 
himself. In other words, we can always test the 
substance of a revelation, but w r e can by no means 
always test the form. When Abraham tells us that 
God is righteous and merciful, when he assures us that 
that is true, and that it was made known to him by God 
Himself, we have no difficulty whatever in believing 
him. “ For every good gift, and every perfect gift is 
from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, 
with whom is no variableness, nor shadow of a turning.” 
But if he were to tell us that God made known this 
truth to him by means of a mysterious apparition of 
three men at his tent door, we should regard that 
statement as completely beyond our power to verify, 
and also as utterly immaterial to the truth itself. We 
judge of what professes to be a revealed truth by consi¬ 
dering what the truth itself is, and not by considering 
the mode in which it was made known. 

The great and obvious defect, therefore, of that mode 
of revelation which consists in a special supernatural 


THE NEW REFORMATION. 


309 


contact with some individual, would in every case be the 
extreme difficulty, not to say impossibility, of furnishing 
to other 'persons sufficient evidence of such super¬ 
natural contact. As, by its very nature, it must be quite 
outside of the general experience of mankind, the man 
who has been conscious of it in himself will be aware of 
no close resemblances, probably of no strong analogies, 
by which to impart to others what he has himself 
experienced. He can therefore do no more than make 
an assertion, which must always be open to grave 
suspicion, as to the mode in which the truth was made 
known to him, and then disclose the truth itself. But 
nothing will ever persuade reasonable human beings 
that what is absurd or immoral can really be of God. 
If therefore any statement be true or good, its truth 
and goodness will be the proof of its divinity; and, if 
it be false and immoral, its falsehood and evil will be the 
disproof of the divinity of the mode of its revelation. 

If we examine the actual history of religious beliefs 
we shall find every reason to suppose that they originated, 
not by special supernatural revelations miraculously 
imparted by God to favoured individuals, hut from all 
the facts of the world on the one hand, as a divine 
material furnished for human use from the beginning; 
and, on the other hand, the operation of the human 
intellect, and reason, and conscience, employed upon 
that material. There have arisen, doubtless, in different 
ages, and in different parts of the world, gifted spirits, 
strong in righteousness, and endowed both with the 
insight and the foresight of goodness, who have per¬ 
ceived far more than their fellow men the open secret of 
the world; have been more profoundly conscious of the 
power and presence of God, have lived more habitually 


310 


THE NEW REFORMATION. 


in spiritual communion witli the Source of all that is; 
and who have believed themselves the special instru¬ 
ments of the Divine will. They have always believed 
themselves commissioned by the Most High, and 
therefore they have always spoken with authority, and 
commanded the assent of their fellow men. More¬ 
over, their superior wisdom, the depth and breadth 
and fruitfulness of the truths they affirmed, their 
practical sagacity, and their sympathy both in thought 
and deed, with those laws which had been unper¬ 
ceived by others—these things have justified their 
claims to a divine guidance, and have ennobled those 
who have consented to be led by them. Moreover— 
a not insignificant token that they believed the inspi¬ 
ration of which they were conscious to cover the whole 
of their life and work—they enjoin, with equal confidence, 
and with equal assumption of divine authority, the 
great moral laws which are of eternal obligation, 
ceremonial differences between clean and unclean, the 
number of loops for the outermost edge of a curtain, 
and the necessary precautions for cleanliness and health. 
Often, too, in their frailty, they claimed even for their 
follies and vices a sort of divine sanction, as when 
Jacob robbed Esau of his birthright; or, in quite 
another region, when Mohammed pretended that the 
truths he made known to the tribes of his people had been 
revealed to him by means of certain supernatural wonders. 
At the same time, it must never be forgotten that the 
enormous pretensions, and, above all, the crafty impos¬ 
ture of the great religious leaders of mankind, are to be 
attributed mostly to their followers rather than 'to 
themselves. The true prophet has ever felt himself 
overwhelmed with a burden of the Lord, and has 


THE NEW REFORMATION. 


311 


dreaded rather than welcomed the awful responsibility 
of superior wisdom. 

But when it is affirmed that the spiritual progress of 
men has been rather of a natural than of a supernatural 
kind, it is to be remembered that even nature itself is 
but an expression of the will of God. Thus the 
Christian Scriptures teach us, that when God deter¬ 
mined to impart to men the completest possible revelation 
of His own character and will He sent His own Son, 
not simply by some supernatural contact with some 
favoured individuals to impart the needed truth to 
them and bid them to communicate it to others, hut 
actually to come within the sphere of nature itself; and 
so to communicate with men by being Himself really 
and truly a man. The foundatiqn, therefore, of the 
Christian religion is a history; and though the advent of 
Christ into the world was unquestionably a revelation of 
that Living Will, which is behind the world, and the 
ultimate cause of all its phenomena, yet the work of 
Christ among men conformed, in every possible par¬ 
ticular, to what we are in the habit of calling the laws 
of nature. Thus it is obvious, at least if we are to 
believe the evangelic history, that Jesus grew in ivisclom, 
and in stature, and in favour with God and man ; that, 
being filled with the Holy Ghost, with that Spirit which 
united Him to the Father, and to every member of the 
Divine family, He was ever ready to perceive and to 
adapt himself to every law both of sonsliip and of 
brotherhood. And yet the inquiring, docile spirit of 
the hoy who asked questions of the doctors in the 
temple, was by no means the same as the ripe wisdom 
of the prophet teaching His disciples on the mount. 
Coming within the limits of earthly nature, and of the 


312 


THE NEW REFORMATION. 


nature of man, even Jesus of Nazareth submitted in 
that very act to reveal to us the will of the Father by 
being a learner , before He could reveal that will to us as 
a teacher. Those who came into personal contact with 
Christ were undoubtedly brought into contact with the 
supernatural. They became aware, more perfectly than 
they had ever known it before, that for all that endlessly 
varying series of phenomena which we call nature, there 
is a cause other than themselves, and independent of 
themselves; and that the Living Will, the Force which 
is the Source of all changes, is akin to the will of man, 
with all its surroundings of wisdom and affection. But 
they arrived at this conviction by means of the very 
naturalness of Christ’s life. In other words, the life of 
Christ in the world taught men not that the super¬ 
natural is separated from the natural by a chasm 
which nothing can bridge over, but that the two are in 
close contact, and that man is in the very image of God. 

It is the special value of the Bible, that it contains 
a record of those facts which have been of the greatest 
spiritual significance, and of the lives and teachings of 
those men to whom it has been given to perceive that 
spiritual significance. Nor is Rationalism in the least 
degree committed to a denial of any miraculous accom¬ 
paniments or instruments of the revelation of truth. 
It is pledged only to examine the evidence and to abide 
by the result. It may not begin the investigation by 
assuming the infallibility of the Scriptures, but neither 
may it begin by assuming the impossibility of a miracle. 
The physical sciences, those which are concerned only 
with phenomena, are undoubtedly within its province. 
But it is also bound to consider whether there may not he 
forces, and a primal Force, behind all phenomena; and 


THE NEW REFORMATION. 


313 


to ascertain, if possible, wliat is the nature of that 
Force. For it is of the very essence of Rationalism, 
that the reason shall employ itself with perfect freedom 
upon every object of human thought; and the tyranny 
of science is quite as irrational as the tyranny of orthodoxy. 
It is a matter of very small importance, for instance, that 
science has found no trace of God among phenomena — 
which constitute the whole province of science—because 
no one who believes in a God imagines that He is a 
“phenomenon.” But Rationalism is bound to ask, what 
the name God connotes* and whether there be any 
reality corresponding to a name wdiich no civilized 
language is without. And for this purpose it is bound 
to avail itself of every kind of evidence. It must 
recognise the facts of the material world, and all the 
positive and proved conclusions of physical science; 
but it must also recognise the facts that are furnished 
by reflection and conscience, by the emotions and the 
will. The propositions of science affirm what is , not 
what always has been, nor what always will be, nor what 
by a necessity independent of itself always must be. 
Science itself is wholly independent of historyand, 
on the other hand, history is wholly independent of 
science. But Rationalism has both of them, and much 
more for its province ; and must, if possible, keep the 
peace and justly arbitrate between them—must receive 
what contributions of truth each has to offer, and com¬ 
pare, and combine, and classify them, and sum up into 
one whole revelation what they have separately furnished, 
“ at sundry times and in divers manners.” 

Science excludes miracles,, not as impossible, but as 
out of its province—as involving a theory about cause 
which belongs not to physics, but to metaphysics. But 


314 


THE NEW REFORMATION. 


Rationalism includes metaphysics, and therefore may 
entertain the question of miracles; it, moreover, includes 
history, and therefore must. 

History includes the life of Jesus Christ, and the 
effects of that life upon mankind; and the record of 
that life, and of its earliest effects, is to be found in the 
New Testament—and there only. It is to be remem¬ 
bered that we do not learn the character of Jesus from 
one source, and His works from another, and the 
character of His followers from a third. If this were so, 
the problem of the origin of Christianity would be by 
no means simple, hut it would admit of some solutions 
which are now impossible. It might, for instance, have 
been contended that Jesus of Nazareth, being a very 
good man, had, by His piety and wisdom, produced a 
profound impression upon some of the nobler spirits of 
His country, had bound them together in a brotherhood 
of mutual affection, and compelled them, by the strength 
of His own convictions, and the fervour of His own 
zeal, to devote their lives to the proclamation of those 
truths which the purity of His own spirit had enabled 
Him to perceive. That His followers gathered about 
themselves a number of believers of far inferior enthu¬ 
siasm and moral earnestness; men and women, wlio, 
like all the vulgar, were ever seeking for signs and 
wonders. That these later followers, not so much of 
Jesus as of His disciples, invented such winders as 
would satisfy their own sense of what was fitting in a 
great religious teacher, and so attributed to Jesus what 
would have been admitted neither by Himself nor by His 
first followers. In this case there would have been 
some plausibility in the hypothesis that, while the 
miracles of Christ must unquestionably he discarded, as 


THE NEW REFORMATION. 


315 


being in fact impossible, we may yet retain our belief 
in the surpassing goodness of His character, and even in a 
sound practical wisdom which at once secured and justified 
the complete confidence and obedience of His disciples. 

But it is quite impossible that this hypothesis should 
be, in any degree, plausible to any one who knows what 
the sources of the history of Christ really are. Not 
only do they belong to the very earliest age of the 
Christian Church, being in fact the records of contem¬ 
poraries, and even of eye witnesses, but we have the 
very same proof of the miracles of Christ that w r e have 
of His personal goodness. If we have no sufficient 
evidence of the miraculous feeding of the five thousand, 
then, for exactly the same reason, we have no proof that 
Jesus ever spoke the words that are called the Sermon 
on the Mount. In a word, we know nothing whatever 
about Him. 

Rationalism, therefore, having most unquestionably 
within its province all problems of literary criticism, 
must determine so far as possible the date and author¬ 
ship of the New Testament books. Having within its 
province human nature, with all its good and evil tenden¬ 
cies, and also the laws of evidence, and the fitting tests 
for the truthfulness of witnesses, must determine how 
far the narrative in the four Gospels is worthy of our 
belief. If it be worthy of belief, then the miracles of 
Christ must be accepted as facts; and any scientific 
theory which is so narrow that it cannot embrace them 
must be widened until it can. The results of a rational 
investigation of the New Testament history I believe, 
for my own part, to be this—that the New Testament 
history is proved to be the best authenticated history in 
all literature. 


316 


THE NEW REFORMATION. 


While, therefore, Rationalism is by no means incom¬ 
patible with a hearty belief in the Christian Scriptures, 
it is a conspicuous fact in the New Reformation that the 
Bible itself is subjected to some higher test, and that 
test is human reason. Or, perhaps I ought to-say, that 
higher test is the whole of human nature, and the whole 
of human experience. The right use of reason is so 
much more difficult than the quotation of texts of 
Scripture, that no one can feel surprised at the extreme 
vexation of those good men who, having justified their 
dogmas by texts, are afterwards required to justify the 
texts. And yet this is the very thing which every 
missionary requires from every heathen, and every 
Protestant requires from every Papist, what every 
Dissenter requires from every Anglican, what is required 
by every sectary, even down to the Plymouth Brethren. 
It is ridiculous to ask people to employ their reason 
upon the interpretation of the Bible, and to refuse the 
right of reason to inquire into the far more important 
question—What right has a certain set of doctrines to be 
considered “ Bible” at all ? For the Bible is not a book 
to be taken up and laid down at our mere convenience; 
it demands from us a certain principle and course of 
life, -which goes to the very root of our nature, and 
influences every word and act, and even every thought. 
If a man is willing to be turned upside down without 
knowing why, the man is a fool; and might just as well 
be a Jew or a Mormon as a Christian. There is 
absolutely no limit recognized by the New Reformation 
beyond which it shall be unlawful for human reason 
to pass, excepting those limits beyond which it is 
impossible for human reason to pass. Secret things 
indeed belong to the Lord; but, on the other hand, what- 



THE NEW REFORMATION. 


317 


ever we can find out is plainly not secret, it is revealed ; 
and that which is revealed belongs to us and to our 
children. That a certain doctrine is taught, or a certain 
duty enjoined in Holy Scripture, is no longer conclusive. 
Indeed, on the face of it the Bible is not a statute-book, 
but a history; not a declaration of what ice ought to do, 
but a record of what certain people thought they ought 
to do. It is very likely that w r e ought to do the same 
things, but that entirely depends upon circumstances ; 
and the circumstances are not determined by the record 
itself. There are thousands of Christians, for instance, 
■who for some wholly inscrutable reasons are fond of 
black puddings ; hut black puddings were distinctly for¬ 
bidden by what may be called the Council of Jerusalem, 
when the Apostles required the Gentiles to abstain from 
fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood. 
Not a creature cares. Probably not one Christian in a 
thousand remembers anything about it, and it is quite 
certain that it matters nothing whatever whether they 
remember it or not. The objection to black puddings 
is in the palate, not in the conscience. And in far graver 
matters we are compelled to determine, not by texts of 
Scripture but by our own reason, which texts of Scrip¬ 
ture are meant to regulate our conduct and which are 
not. This is universally confessed, whenever it can be 
confessed safely. The fourth commandment, for in¬ 
stance, requires the setting apart of every Saturday as a 
day of rest; all Christians take the liberty of setting 
aside this precept, and they keep their Sabbath on Sun¬ 
day. There is nothing whatever in the Bible distinctly 
requiring this change ; it is quite justified, however, by 
reason. Even circumcision has never been directly 
abolished; and St. Paul himself, the apostle of the 


818 


THE NEW REFORMATION. 


Gentiles, had Timothy circumcised. Circumcision has 
been abolished, not by the Bible, hut by reason. Again, 
nothing can be in form more unlike the primitive 
Christian worship than the worship of Christians in our 
own day. The worship of the early Christians was quite 
sociable, a sort of family prayers, almost always accom¬ 
panied with a meal, the breaking of bread, and the cup 
of blessing. What could St. Paul have made of an old- 
fashioned English parish Church, with a big high softly- 
cushioned pew for the squire, and a row of purgatorial 
seats for the common people ? And yet, if the Church 
has lost much by her departure from primitive simplicity, 
she has also gained much ; and worship can only be 
simple when the worshippers themselves are simple. In 
fact, everybody employs reason until he gets into a fix; 
and then, with the devout piety of an ostrich, he thrusts 
his head into the sand. “ Preposterous rubbish your 
heathen legends are,” he says; “ your sacred books have 
neither external evidence nor internal evidence to satisfy a 
reasonable being—Popish legends and myths! Are we, 
enlightened Englishmen of the nineteenth century, are 
we at this time of day to believe in liquefying blood, and 
winking Marys, and tomfoolery of that sort ?” “ Dis¬ 

gusting rubbish,” echoes some promising young man. 
“Yes, indeed,” says the first, with an air of patronizing 
approval, “ what a mercy for all of us, and especially 
for young men, that we are born in the days of gospel 
light, and that all these absurdities have become for all 
of us incredible.” “ I should think they have, old 
gentleman,” says the flippant youth ; “ and all that stuff 
about Jonah saying his prayers in poetry in the belly of 
a whale.” 

Alas ! to what lengths will flippant young men go ! 


THE NEW REFORMATION. 


319 


It is scarcely necessary to hint at any of those positive 
conclusions which the application of the new test has 
already brought about. In fact, the conclusions are of 
quite subordinate importance, the method and principle 
are everything. So long as we believe that the necessary 
divine help is granted to all human beings, whether they 
be the right reverend bishops studying the fathers, or 
wise men in the east studying the stars, or London 
tailors studying, shall I say, “ Payne’s Age of Reason 
so long as we urge upon every one the solemn duty of 
opening his heart to the light, whencesoever it may come, 
and walking in the light whithersoever it may lead; that 
is the great matter. Nevertheless, there are certain con¬ 
sequences of the New Reformation already sufficiently 
conspicuous to deserve notice. 

First of all, it destroys the claim of any Church to be 
the Church. The exclusive claims of the different 
churches are founded, not upon reason, but on some 
sort of authority. A thinking man can find some truth 
in every church, and perfect truth in no church. No¬ 
thing but Rationalism can do justice, for instance, to the 
Roman Catholic church. The Evangelicals regard Rome 
as the mystic Babylon, and the Pope as the scarlet 
woman. The mass is to them a mere idolatry, and the 
confessional a brothel; they can see no glory in the 
past history of the Roman church; they cannot under¬ 
stand how her solid organization conquered heathenism, 
and resisted barbarism, and formed all European nations 
out of the seething chaos of the dismembered Roman 
Empire. And, on the other hand, when Englishmen 
have begun to do justice to the Roman Catholic church, 
they never know where to stop—unless they are ration¬ 
alists. They seem to think that what might have been 


320 


THE NEW [REFORMATION. 


good for a particular crisis in human history, when God 
had come forth mightily to shake the earth, is good for 
a time in human history when the mighty shaking has 
done its work, and men are called to rest and be thankful. 
Nay, they imitate the Roman church, not as she was 
in the days of her power and purity, when she was in 
the van of human progress, the teacher of the ignorant, 
the liberator of the enslaved, the great witness for the 
impartial love of God to all mankind. They imitate 
her as she became when her truth petrified into dogma, 
when, by the haughty and even inhuman claim of in¬ 
fallibility, she refused to lead mankind in the path of pro¬ 
gress, and demanded that there should be no human pro¬ 
gress to lead. They imitate her as she became, when her 
priests degenerated into crafty tyrants, and her religious 
ceremonial into pagan conjuring, when the very com¬ 
munion of saints had become rather the excommuni¬ 
cation of the mass of mankind, and the sacrament of 
baptism the witness not so much of the salvation of the 
baptized as of the damnation of everybody else. 

Whenever now we hear a priest or layman requiring 
our submission to some particular Church, because it is 
the Church, we listen, not with contempt, for the man 
may be good and earnest, his particular Church may be 
just the place at which his spirit in its progress is for a 
while resting; but w r e listen to such a claim with the 
profoundest pity for the man who makes it, because we 
know that there is a way of holding the truth itself 
which neutralises all its value. “Well knows he, who 
uses to consider that our faith and knowledge thrive 
by exercise as well as our limbs and complexion. Truth 
is compared in Scripture to a streaming fountain ; if her 
waters flow not in a perpetual progression, they sicken 


THE NEW REFORMATION. 


321 


into a muddy pool of conformity and tradition. A man 
may be a heretic in the truth; and if he believe things 
only because his pastor says so, or the assembly so 
determines, without knowing other reason, though his 
belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes his 
heresy.”* 

Any one who has come, even in the least degree, 
within the reach of the new Reformation—a reformation 
which, like every preceding one, is recognized last of all 
by the authorized guides of religious thought—can only 
read with a bewildered amazement such words as the 
following ; the words of an Anglican priest, who writes 
a pastoral letter for his congregation, after consultation 
with other parish priests, and who may be regarded 
almost as a representative of a very powerful sect within 
the Establishment. “ The Church of England takes her 
stand not on Acts of Parliament or Royal injunction, or 
even a purer faith, or greater manifestation of the 
spiritual life; all this might one day fail her. She is 
the one only Christian body having mission from Christ 
to this land, and on this she founds her claim on your 
allegiance. She is the only church in the world which 
can claim the joint British and Saxon succession. The 
succession of the old British Church, founded by St. 
Paul, or one of his immediate companions, and that of 
the later Saxon Church, founded by St. Augustine, met 
in her, and in her alone. Other bodies of Christians in 
England may have or may lack a valid priesthood ; but 
all agree in either lacking mission altogether, or having 
an intruded mission which is worthless.” It is scarcely 
possible to put words together which would contain more 


* Milton’s Areopagitica. 
Y 




322 


THE NEW REFORMATION. 


absurdities than these few sentences. But what do the 
mass of thinking men care for this sort of twaddle ? 
When a man tells us that what he calls mission is of 
more importance than purity of faith, or reality of 
spiritual life, we know exactly what to make of him. A 
“ mission” to proclaim the truth can never be separated 
from the knowledge of the truth; and it is simple non¬ 
sense to affirm that a man who really knows the funda¬ 
mental truths of the Christian religion must keep his 
mouth shut until it can he proved that he is in the 
succession of the old British Church founded by X or Y, 
and of the later church founded by St. Augustine. 

So, again, it is one of the results of the new Be- 
formation that a mere mistake may in no case be 
punished as a sin. The intellect can only work ac¬ 
cording to its own laws. Belief must in all cases depend 
upon evidence, and if the evidence be insufficient there 
can be no belief; and it is not only right, it is inevitable, 
that there should be none. But this elementary prin¬ 
ciple is recognized by scarcely a single existing sect of 
Christians. It is notorious, for instance, that almost 
all those who call themselves orthodox believe that the 
whole body of Unitarians are not only in error, but in 
fatal error, so that unless they are brought to Trinitarian 
truth they cannot possibly be saved. But surely there 
are very many considerations by which this harsh judg¬ 
ment might be modified. It is exceedingly difficult to 
determine by what a man says on some particular dogma, 
whether or not he believes even the fact of which that 
dogma is meant to be the verbal expression. It is im¬ 
possible, for instance, to read many of the hymns in 
Mr. Martineau’s selection, “ Hymns for the Christian 
Church and Home,” without feeling that every one who 


THE NEW REFORMATION. 


323 


can sincerely use them must be able to give an answer to 
the question, “ What think ye of Christ ?” which crowds 
of Trinitarians might envy. The doctrine of the Unity 
of God is, to say the least, quite as important as the 
doctrine of the Trinity. If either may he held in 
abeyance it is surely the doctrine of the Trinity; because 
that doctrine is revealed to us, if at all, in the personal 
history of Jesus Christ, and in the spiritual experience 
of living men and women. These facts, therefore, the 
life of Christ and the experience of human beings, 
would of themselves suggest so much as is true of the 
modern doctrine of the Trinity, whereas the doctrine of 
the Trinity alone, without a very clear affirmation of the 
Unity of God, might easily degenerate, and, as a matter 
of fact, much oftener than not has degenerated into the 
doctrine that there are three equal and separate Gods. 
But not only is this danger to be apprehended in dog¬ 
matic statements about the nature of God; it lurks in 
almost every corner of orthodoxy. The ordinary doctrine 
of the Atonement, for instance, unmistakeably divides 
the substance. It represents the will of the Father as 
determined by the sacrifice of the Son; and in its 
coarser forms it represents the will of the Father as vio¬ 
lently opposed to the will of the Son. In fact, of all 
those who use the strongest possible expressions, who 
chant with all earnestness, on the appointed festivals, 
the Athanasian Creed,—or who, on the other hand, declare 
that the homage of Jesus Christ is a debasing idolatry,— 
it is for the most part impossible to affirm what their 
belief really is. “ We see men of all kinds of professed 
creeds attain to almost all degrees of worth or worth¬ 
lessness under each or any of them. This is not what 
I call religion; this profession and assertion, which is 

y 2 


324 


THE NEW REFORMATION. 


often only a profession and assertion from the outworks 
of the man, from the mere argumentative region of him, 
if even so deep as that. But the thing a man does 
practically believe (and this is often enough without 
• asserting it even to himself, much less to others), the 
thing a man does practically lay to heart, and know for 
certain concerning his vital relations to this mysterious 
universe, and his duty or destiny there, that is in all 
cases the primary thing for him, and creatively deter¬ 
mines all the rest.”* 

But quite apart from the fact that it is wholly im¬ 
possible for any one to ascertain what anybody else 
means by his own dogmatic formularies, it is scarcely 
possible to find a human being so vain as to imagine 
that his own dogmatic formulas, even when taken in 
the sense in which he himself accepts them, are adequate 
expressions of the truth. To begin with, they are in¬ 
adequate because they are indefinite, because they admit 
of being accepted in very many senses. And if not, 
what form of words is there which exhausts the de¬ 
scription of the divine nature ? Is a man, then, to be 
damned for ever because he denies the doctrine of the 
Trinity ? On the other hand, is a man to be damned 
for ever because he worships Jesus Christ ? And again, 
is a man to be damned for ever for anything ? Is there 
any mistake so fatal, any vice so incurable, any rebellion 
of the will so wholly beyond God’s power to tame, that 
it must needs involve everlasting torment, everlasting 
wickedness, and everlasting error ? Is the world so 
clumsily made, and human history so hopelessly dis¬ 
orderly and insignificant, that they contain no revelation 


* Carlyle. “ Hero Worship.” 



THE NEW REFORMATION. 


825 


of the nature and attributes of Almighty God ? Is the 
reason of man so unreceptive, and so unresponsive, that 
the open secret of the universe must remain for ever 
unknown ? Is the human will so madly rebellious, that 
for ever and ever it will choose to resist every appeal of 
infinite wisdom and inexhaustible love ? 

The very centre of the new Reformation is charity;— 
charity in order that we may know the truth, charity in 
order that the truth may do us good when we do know 
it. Indeed, in a single sentence, the motto of the new 
Reformation, and the very principle of Rationalism itself, 
may be expressed in the words of our Saviour Christ; 
“ I am a King. To this end was I born, and for this 
cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness 
unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth 
my voice.” 


JOHN STUART MILL.* 


Mr. Mill is himself a very noble example of the effect of 
that culture—intellectual, moral, and aesthetical—which 
he recommends to the students of the University of 
Aberdeen. It is impossible to read what he has written 
without something like a horrible suspicion that some¬ 
how or other the intellectual vigour of Englishmen is 
degenerating. It is easy enough still to find accurate 
scholars, it is also easy to find men who have not only 

* References to Mr. Mill’s works are to the editions named hi 
the following list. 

A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, being a con¬ 
nected view of the principles of evidence, and the methods of Scientific 
Investigation. In two volumes. Sixth edition. 1855. 

An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy and of 
the Principal Philosophical Questions discussed in his Writings. 
1865. 

Auguste Comte and Positivism. Second edition. 1866. 

Dissertations and Discussions, Political, Philosophical, and 
Historical. In three volumes. 1867. 

Utilitarianism. 1863. 

Essays on some unsettled Questions of Political Economy. 1844. 

Principles of Political Economy, with some of their applications 
to Social Philosophy. In two volumes. Second edition. 1849. 

Considerations on Representative Government. Third edition. 
1865. 

On Liberty. Second edition. 1859. 

Inaugural Address delivered to the University of St. Andrew's, 
February 1st, 1867. 1867. 





JOHN STUART MILL. 


327 


explored but enlarged tlie domain of the physical sciences. 
Again, there is no lack of weak-minded philanthropists, 
and of strong-minded men who are weak in love. But 
there is scarcely a living Englishman whose culture is 
so thorough on all sides, who is so complete a master 
both of the old learning and the new, who is at once so 
wise and so benevolent, who has so firm a hold of great 
principles and so delicate a skill in applying them to the 
complicated details of common life, as Mr. John S. Mill. 
He may well look down with amazement on the sort of 
education with which the present generation seems to be 
content. The amount of knowledge which now elevates a 
boy or young man almost to the rank of a genius, is pre¬ 
cisely the amount of knowledge which he ought to be 
flogged for being without. It is wholly incredible that, 
with anything like judicious teaching, a boy’s whole 
school-time should be exhausted in acquiring a very 
imperfect knowledge of the classics, and perhaps even less 
of mathematics; while in most of what are called com¬ 
mercial schools, not even so much as this is attempted. 
There is a certain part of everybody’s education which 
should be accurate and general, and not merely pro¬ 
fessional ; the man himself needs culture, and when that 
great object has been secured, it will then be time 
enough to learn the details of his own profession or 
trade. Very few indeed have either the natural gifts or 
the acquired knowledge of Mr. Mill; but it surely ought 
to be possible, and even easy, for any man or woman who 
professes to be educated at all, to read with some fair 
appreciation what he has written. 

Even in mere style he is himself a model, whom the 
Aberdeen students might with the utmost advantage 
imitate. His is a truly classical style; not in the sense 


328 


JOHN STUART MILL. 


of being a servile imitation of any one Greek or Latin 
author, but in the sense of possessing those very qualities 
which make the best of the Greek and Latin authors so 
admirable. Mr. Mill’s style is in all cases completely 
subordinate to his matter, and wholly determined by it. 
Having something to say, some truth to impart to all 
who may be willing to listen to him, his one great object 
is, distinctly and accurately to say it. His writings are 
so perfectly clear that it is almost impossible, even for 
the dullest reader, to miss his meaning; and in truth, 
passing from him to those with whom he most closely 
agrees, as to those subjects of which they both treat— 
passing, for instance, from Mr. Mill’s “ Examination of 
Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy,” to Professor Bain’s 
“ Senses and Intellect”—the mere difference of style 
occasions an almost painful discomfort. Mr. Bain’s 
book is by no means obscure; and again, the style of 
Sir William Hamilton has been sometimes regarded as 
almost the perfection of philosophical language. But 
compared with Mr. Mill Mr. Bain seems heavy and 
uninteresting, and Sir W. Hamilton pedantic and 
un-English. Mr. Mill has shown that it is perfectly 
possible to express all that Sir W. Hamilton wanted to 
say, in the very simplest English; without one of those 
uncouth technical terms, which are always misleading 
when they are not almost miraculously precise—and 
leaving to the reader no difficulty, except that which is 
inherent in the subject. 

Once again, judging Mr. Mill by those very tests 
which he himself furnished for the guidance of the 
Aberdeen students, we are bound to admit that his 
extraordinary culture is no way regarded by him as a 
private luxury, but far rather as a precious gift bestowed 





JOHN STUART MILL. 


329 


upon him in trust for the good of his fellowmen. Some¬ 
times he may seem to look down almost with contempt 
upon ignorance and feebleness, hut it is only when they 
are professing to he something other than they are; 
when ignorance vaunts itself as wisdom, and weakness 
of conviction affects to he sensitiveness of conscience, or 
the special reverence of religion. Otherwise his sym¬ 
pathy and his help, both in word and deed, have been 
ever at the service of the oppressed ; and at the very 
least, no one can accuse him of being nothing more 
than a clever writer or a profound thinker, with no clear 
and fruitful suggestions for the good of society. Science 
must ever precede a perfect art; and he who can perfect 
the one is in the end the best helper of those who must 
practise the other. But Mr. Mill’s writings are not 
merely scientific or theoretic, they abound with the most 
fruitful practical suggestions; they manifest, moreover, 
an impartiality almost unexampled; they are perfectly 
free from all those devices by which mere partisans are 
in the habit of blinding the eyes of their followers to the 
dangers even of those changes which are necessary and 
beneficial. Thus, for instance, the despotism of autocrats, 
and the selfish incompetence of privileged classes, are 
not more justly estimated than the fatal tyranny of the 
numerical majority—the despotism and selfishness of 
the mob. 

“ The great mass of Mr. Mill’s labour,” says Mr. 
Martineau,* “has been devoted to what may he termed 
the middle ground of human thought, below the primary 
data which reason must assume, and short of the applied 
science which has practice for its end. At the upper 


# National Review, 1859. 



830 


JOHN STUART MILL. 


limit, shunning the original postulates of all knowledge, 
and at the lower, its concrete results, he has addressed 
himself to its intermediary processes, and determined 
the methods for working out derivative but still general 
truths. Does he treat of the investigation of nature ? 
he takes it up to the highest laws of phenomena, irre¬ 
spective of the hypothesis of an ulterior source. Does he 
define the range of logic? It is the science of proof, 
dealing only with the inference of secondary truths, not 
the science of belief, which would include also the list of 
first truths. Does he explain the business of Ethics ? 
It is to appraise and classify voluntary actions by their 
consequences, not to scrutinize them in their springs.” 
Possibly, six years later, after the publication of the 
“ Examination of Sir W. Hamilton’s Philosophy,” this 
judgment might have been slightly modified. Mr. 
Mill, no doubt, believes that he has much reduced the 
number of primary data and original postulates, but it 
can scarcely now be said that he has shunned them. 
The reasons for his reticence in the earlier editions of 
his “ Logic ” w 7 ere by no means without force, but that 
reticence has now ceased to be necessary. In the pre¬ 
face to the sixth edition of his “Logic,” he says; “A 
cause of complaint has been removed, which could 
hardly have arisen at a much earlier period. The main 
doctrines of this treatise are on the whole compatible 
with either of the conflicting theories respecting the 
ultimate structure of the human mind—the a priori, or 
intuitional theory, and the experiential theory ; though 
they may require from the former, or rather from certain 
forms of it, the sacrifice of some of its outworks. I had 
therefore, as announced in the introduction, abstained 
as much as possible from carrying the inquiry beyond 


JOHN STUART MILL. 


331 


the peculiar field of logic, into the remoter metaphysical 
regions of thought; and have been content to express the 
doctrines and reasonings of logic in terms which are the 
common property of both the contending schools of 
metaphysicians. This reserve was probably favourable 
in the first instance to the reception of the work, but a 
time came when some readers became impatient of it. 
Finding that the investigations continually stopped short 
because they could not have been carried further without 
entering on the higher metaphysics, some were disposed 
to conclude that the author had not himself ventured to 
pursue his speculations into that province, and that if 
he had done so he might probably have brought back 
from that region different conclusions from those arrived 
at in the work. The reader has now the means of 
satisfying himself whether this is the case or not. I 
have indeed maintained the same abstinence as in the 
former editions from the actual discussion of any but a 
few outlying questions of metaphysics, since no other 
plan seems to me appropriate to a treatise on Logic ; 
but the place of such discussion has been supplied by 
references to a work recently published, “ An Examina¬ 
tion of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy,” in which 
will be found the remainder of the investigations which 
have necessarily been cut short in these pages. In a 
few cases in which it appeared possible and appropriate, 
as in the concluding section of Chap. III. of the second 
Book, a place has been made for the substance of what 
has been set .forth and explained with greater fulness in 
the separate w r ork.” 

All nameable things are included by Mr. Mill in four 
classes ; and, as all possible objects of thought can have 
names given to them, all possible objects of thought 


332 


JOHN STUART MILL. 


must belong to one or other of these four classes. Every 
thing that we can think of or name, must belong, either 
(first) to feelings or states of consciousness, or (secondly) 
the minds which experience those feelings, or (thirdly) 
the bodies or external objects which excite certain of 
those feelings together with the powers or properties 
whereby they excite them, or (lastly) the relations 
between states of consciousness. Mr. Mill is careful to 
state that the second and third of these classes cannot 
be proved to be real objects; he includes them only out 
of deference to common language, which expresses in 
this matter an almost universal belief. 

But it is hard to understand why Mr. Mill should 
have retained even his fourth class of nameable things. 
States of consciousness cannot be considered as real 
entities ; which admit of being compared with one another 
just as, on the ordinary hypothesis, we can compare tables 
and chairs with one another. When we have banished 
both bodies and minds, the perception of a resemblance 
between two states of consciousness is itself a simple 
feeling. The inference that we are comparing two 
separate and different things may be just as delusive as 
the inference that our sensations are occasioned by some 
external object. In fact, Mr. Mill destroys even what 
he calls a thread of consciousness. If it be not absurd 
to speak of a man’s life at all, it would seem that it con¬ 
sists of a long series of mental states, not one of which 
of course can be conscious of itself as part of a series. 
What I call memory may be merely treacherous when it 
seems to assure me that I, who experience a certain 
feeling, now am the very same person who experienced 
a closely similar feeling at some past time. Past and 
present can only be thus united, not merely by an ideal 


JOHN STUART MILL. 


333 


thread upon which the separate beads of consciousness 
may he strung, but by the enduring reality of a living 
subject of whose mental life these various states of con¬ 
sciousness have formed a part. This, indeed, Mr. Mill 
himself seems prepared to admit; regarding it as an 
ultimate and inexplicable fact. “ The theory,”* he says, 
“ which resolves mind into a series of feelings, with a 
background of possibilities of feeling .... has in¬ 
trinsic difficulties which we have not yet set forth, and 
which it seems to me beyond the power of metaphysical 
analysis to remove. Besides present feelings, and pos¬ 
sibilities of present feeling, there is another class of 
phenomena to be included in an enumeration of the 
elements making up our conception of Mind. The 
thread of consciousness, which composes the mind’s 
phenomenal life, consists not only of present sensations, 
hut likewise, in part, of memories and expectations. 
Now what are these ? In themselves they are present 
feelings, states of present consciousness, and in that 
respect not distinguished from sensations. They all, 
moreover, resemble some given sensations or feelings, of 
which we have previously had experience. But they 
are attended with the peculiarity that each of them in¬ 
volves a belief in more than its own present existence. 
A sensation involves only this; hut a remembrance of 
sensation, even if not referred to any particular date, 
involves the suggestion and belief that a sensation, of 
which it is a copy or representation, actually existed in 
the past: and an expectation involves the belief, more 
or less positive, that a sensation or other feeling to 
which it directly refers, will exist in the future. Nor 


* “ Examination of Sir W. Hamilton’s Philosophy,” p. 211. 






884 


JOHN STUART MILL. 


can the phenomena involved in these two states of con¬ 
sciousness be adequately expressed without saying, that 
the belief they include is, that I myself formerly had, or 
that I myself, and no other, shall hereafter have, the 
sensations remembered or expected. The fact believed 
is, that the sensations did actually form, or will hereafter 
form, part of the self-same series of states, or thread of 
consciousness, of which the remembrance or expectation 
of those sensations is the part now present. If, there¬ 
fore, we speak of the Mind as a series of feelings, we are 
obliged to complete the statement by calling it a series 
of feelings which is aware of itself as past and future; 
and we are reduced to the alternative of believing that 
the Mind, or Ego, is something different from any series 
of feelings, or possibilities of them, or of accepting the 
paradox, that something which ex liypothesi is hut a 
series of feelings, can be aware of itself as a series.” 

But why should we accept the paradox instead of 
believing that the mind is something different from any 
series of feelings ? If memory were a very rare phe¬ 
nomenon, occurring only once or twice in a lifetime, a 
theory which could not without a certain sort of absurdity 
explain memory, might nevertheless be a useful theory 
of the mind. But, in fact, it may be affirmed that 
memory is probably the most constant and universal of 
all mental phenomena. If we want to ascertain the time 
of day by looking at the face of a clock, we not only 
remember what a clock is, hut we must look at both its 
hands, and then compare their positions on the dial. If 
we do not remember the position of the hour hand when 
we observe the minute hand, we shall never know the 
time. We make the calculation with enormous rapidity, 
but nevertheless it must occupy some time, however 


JOHN STUART MILL. 


335 


small. That state of consciousness which we refer to 
the minute hand must be regarded as separate and 
different from that which we refer to the hour hand ; 
and the two can only be compared if there he a perma¬ 
nent subject of whose experience both these states of 
consciousness are parts. Every one of those things which 
are included in Mr. Mill’s fourth class of things name- 
able involves memory, while memory itself belongs also 
to the first class. A theory of mind, therefore, which 
fails to account for the largest part of all mental phe¬ 
nomena, can scarcely be considered complete. It may 
safely enough be admitted that the Ego being an ultimate 
fact is inexplicable, hut that surely can be no reason for 
rejecting it. Nor, on the other hand, is the mystery 
the least lessened by a theory, however symmetrical, 
which tries to escape the fact by an ingenious explana¬ 
tion of the mode in which we might conceivably have 
been led to believe that mind is a separate reality, even 
though in reality it may he only a series of feelings, with 
a background of possibilities of feeling. 

Moreover, a philosophy which derives almost every 
one of our firmest beliefs from the laws of association is 
more deeply in need than any other philosophy of that 
memory which it is unable to explain, and that abiding 
personality of which memory testifies. If we grant the 
existence of an abiding mind, manifesting itself of course 
by diverse phenomena, but itself different from any and 
from all of them—then it may not be difficult to account 
for the belief in the Non-Ego by the laws of association. 
But the laws of association mean, not simply that certain 
states of consciousness have existed one after another, 
but that I myself have continually observed that certain 
things were always connected together by some contiguity 


336 


JOHN STUART MILL. 


or resemblance. Indeed, if we cannot believe this, it 
seems impossible to imagine what we ever could be 
justified in believing. If we regard the external world 
as including possibilities of sensation, we can only arrive 
at this belief because we ourselves have over and over 
again experienced certain sensations in groups or sets. 
Whether this purely ideal explanation of the Non-Ego 
be philosophical and complete is at least an open ques¬ 
tion ; but at any rate it requires, almost more than any 
other theory, the separate reality of the Ego. 

Mr. Mill is well aware that when he rejects the 
ordinary explanations of universal beliefs, he is almost 
bound to furnish a better explanation of his own; and 
accordingly he furnishes us with a very lucid exposition 
of the psychological theory of the belief in an external 
world. “I proceed,” he says,* “to state the case of 
those who hold that the belief in an external world is 
not intuitive, but an acquired product.” But it is 
surely obvious that the mode in which w r e arrive at a 
belief can have no effect whatever upon the reality of 
that which is believed. Indeed the psychological theory 
is more in need of the reality of the Non-Ego than its 
rival. If our belief in an external world be intuitive, it 
may be a harmless and a useful delusion. The belief, at 
any rate, is both harmless and useful; and the produc¬ 
tion of that belief without a world at all—with all its 
details, and with all their consistency—might conceivably 
have served the purpose of the Creator as completely as 
the creation of a material universe. But if the belief 
in an external w r orld be not intuitive, not a part of the 
original furniture of the mind; if it be an acquired 


* “ Examinations,” &c., 190. 




JOHN STUART MILL. 


337 


product, needing for its production innumerable repeti¬ 
tions of sensations in definite groups, liow are these 
sensations to be accounted for ? The organs of sense 
themselves are parts of the external world: how are 
they to be accounted for ? Do the laws of associatio 
depend upon innumerable repetitions of —nothing ? 

“Matter,” says Mr. Mill, “may be defined a Perma¬ 
nent Possibility of Sensation. I see a piece of white 
paper on a table. I go into another room, and though 
I have ceased to see it, I am persuaded that the paper 
is still there. I no longer have the sensations which it 
gave me, but I believe that when I again place myself 
in the circumstances in which I had those sensations, 
that is, when I go again into the room, I shall again 
have them; and further, that there has been no inter¬ 
vening moment at which this would not have been the 
case. Owing to this law of my mind, my conception of 
the world at any given instant consists, in only a small 
proportion, of present sensations. Of these I may at 
the time have none at all, and they are in any case a 
most insignificant portion of the whole which I appre¬ 
hend. The conception I form of the world existing at 
any moment comprises, along with the sensations I am 
feeling, a countless variety of possibilities of sensation; 
namely, the whole of those which past observation tells 
me that I could, under any supposable circumstances, 
experience at this moment, together with an indefinite 
and illimitable multitude of others which, though I do 
not know that I could, yet it is possible that I might 
experience in circumstances not known to me. These 
various possibilities are the important thing to me in 
the world. My present sensations are generally of little 
importance, and are moreover fugitive; the possibilities, 

z 


v 



838 


JOHN STUART MILL. 


on tlie contrary, are permanent, which is the character 
that mainly distinguishes our idea of substance or 
matter from our notion of sensation. These possibili¬ 
ties, which are conditional certainties, need a special 
name to distinguish them from mere vague possibilities, 
which experience gives no warrant for reckoning upon. 
Now, as soon as a distinguishing name is given, though 
it he only to the same thing regarded in a different 
aspect, one of the most familiar experiences of our 
mental nature teaches us that the different name comes 
to be considered as the name of a different thing. 

“ There is another important peculiarity of these 
certified or guaranteed possibilities of sensation, namely, 
that they have reference, not to single sensations, hut to 
sensations joined together in groups. When we think 
of anything as a material substance or body, we either 
have had, or we think that on some given supposition 
we should have, not some one sensation, but a great and 
even an indefinite number and variety of sensations, 
generally belonging to different senses, but so linked 
together that the presence of one announces the possible 
presence at the very same instant of any or all of the 
rest. In our mind, therefore, not only is this particular 
possibility of sensation invested with the quality of 
permanence when we are not actually feeling any of the * 
sensations at all; but when we are feeling some of them 
the remaining sensations of the group are conceived by 
us in the form of present possibilities, which might be 
realized at the very moment. And as this happens in 
turn to all of them, the group as a whole presents itself 
to the mind as permanent, in contrast, not solely with 
the temporariness of my bodily presence, but also with the 
temporary character of each of the sensations composing 


JOHN STUART MILL. 


339 


tlie group; in other words, as a kind of permanent substra¬ 
tum, under a set of passing experiences or manifesta¬ 
tions, which is another leading character of our idea of 
substance or matter as distinguished from sensation.”* 
Now what is the problem ? To account for our 
belief in an external world. Let us grant that the 
belief is acquired, though we cannot remember a time 
when we were without it. Nevertheless, there must 
have been a time when we first made an acquaintance 
with what we believed to be external to ourselves. We 
saw, for example—or at least something happened which 
we afterwards were compelled to explain by the hypothe¬ 
sis of a permanent mind or Ego —we observed a piece of 
white paper lying on a table; we noticed its form, 
colour, position, smoothness, hardness, weight; we 
experienced, in fact, a definite group or set of sensations. 
We had never seen a piece of white paper before; and 
inasmuch as one single group of sensations not associated 
as yet by contiguity or resemblance with any other 
group, would awaken neither memory nor anticipation, 
we should have no reason for expecting to see a piece of 
white paper again. But supposing, by sheer accident, 
we were to pass fifty or sixty times near the same table, 
observe the same piece of white paper, and experience 
thereupon the same definite group or set of sensations, 
how should we explain this recurrence of feeling ? 
Would the piece of white paper be in the least degree 
more real after we had seen it fifty times than it 
was when we saw it for the first time ? If the belief in 
an external world be intuitive, we should have referred 
our sensations at first to the piece of white paper as an 


# “ Examination,” &c., pp. 192—194. 
z 2 




340 


JOHN STUART MILL. 


external object; but if it be acquired, tbe same result 
would have been arrived at, though by a slower process. 
We should have perceived that though we might move 
away from the piece of paper, yet if we chose to be near 
it, we were no longer masters of our own sensations. We 
should have found out that we were unable steadily to look 
at a thin, light, square piece of white paper, and then ex¬ 
perience the sensations of heaviness, and roundness, 
and thickness, and blueness. We should have come to 
feel;—This piece of paper is as real as I am, and is 
external to myself; I do not take it away with me; it is 
not a group of sensations I can produce at will, whether 
the paper be present or absent; moreover, when it is 
present, it can compel me to experience a certain group 
of sensations, however much I may try not to experience 
them together. It is, therefore, not myself, it is not 
merely a group of my sensations, but a real external 
object, which is a cause of my sensations. Thus, 
though by different roads, by direct intuition, or sure 
inference, we arrive at the same result—an invincible 
belief in the Non-Ego. To call a piece of white paper 
a permanent possibility of sensations throws no light 
whatever upon the problem we are endeavouring to 
solve, because we must then ask how it is that a piece 
of white paper is a permanent possibility of sensations ; 
and, moreover, of a certain group of sensations, and of that 
group only. The only reasonable explanation seems to be 
that it is a permanent possibility of a definite group of 
sensations, because it is a real object, external to ourselves, 
and wholly independent of our states of consciousness. 

“ One of the best ways,” says Mr. Mill,* “ of showing 


# Logic, Yol. I., page 62. 



JOHN STUART MILL. 


341 


what is meant by substance is, to consider what position 
it is necessary to take up, in order to maintain its 
existence against opponents. 

“It is certain, then, that a part of our notion of a body 
consists of the notion of a number of sensations of our 
own, or of other sentient beings, habitually occurring 
simultaneously. My conception of the table at which I 
am writing is compounded of its visible form and size, 
which are complex sensations of sight; its tangible form 
and size, which are complex sensations of our organs of 
touch and our muscles; its weight, which is also a sensation 
of touch and of the muscles ; its colour, which is a sensa¬ 
tion of sight; its hardness, which is a sensation of the 
muscles ; its composition, which is another word for all 
the varieties of sensation which we receive under various 
circumstances from the wood of which it is made, and so 
forth. All or most of these various sensations frequently 
are, and as we learn by experience, always might be 
experienced simultaneously, or in many different orders 
of succession, at our own choice ; and hence the thought 
of any one of them makes us think of the others, and 
the whole becomes mentally amalgamated into one mixed 
state of consciousness, which, in the language of the 
school of Locke and Hartley, is termed a complex idea. 

“ Now, there are philosophers who have argued as 
follows. If we conceive an orange to be divested of its 
natural colour without acquiring any new one; to lose 
its softness without becoming hard, its roundness without 
becoming square or pentagonal, or of any other regular 
or irregular figure whatever; to be deprived of size, of 
weight, of taste, of smell; to lose all its mechanical and 
all its chemical properties, and acquire no new ones ; to 
become, in short, invisible, intangible, imperceptible, not 


342 


JOHN STUART MILL. 


only by all our senses, but by the senses of all other 
sentient beings, real or possible; nothing, sa}^ these 
thinkers, would remain. For of what nature, they ask, 
could be the residuum ? and by what token could it 
manifest its presence ?” 

But what does this amount to beyond saying, that if 
an object does really exist, and is really possessed of 
certain properties, it will be manifested by means of 
those properties. If an orange were neither round, nor 
soft, nor juicy, nor coloured, nor possessed of weight, it 
would simply not be an orange. Nobody denies that we 
recognize external objects by means of the effect which 
they produce upon ourselves—the real question is, what 
is the best mode of accounting for those effects which 
are so constantly produced upon ourselves. The existence 
of external objects, having definite properties and dif¬ 
fering from one another, would at once account for those 
effects. If w T e do not accept that explanation, we are 
compelled to accept the alternative—the psychological 
theory; and that theory cannot possibly explain how it 
comes to pass, that the very first time that we see a 
piece of white paper, we experience the very same group 
of sensations, which we experience, without diminution 
or addition, after seeing it a million times. 

Indeed, on Mr. Mill’s theory, the whole universe of 
matter and mind may be compared to innumerable series 
of small marbles, crossing and re-crossing one another 
in all manners of ways. Each series may be taken to 
represent the life of a single human being, and the 
points of intersection may be taken to represent the 
opportunities that exist of our knowledge of one another. 
We may take any one series as a type of all the rest; 
and we must imagine some invisible hand dropping 


JOHN STUA11T MILL. 


843 


marble after marble, sometimes in straight lines, some¬ 
times in double parallel lines, sometimes in diverging, 
and then again converging lines, sometimes in little 
groups, and sometimes in sets of groups, till we arrive 
at tlie last marble of the series—which may stand for the 
consciousness of any individual at this present moment. 
These marbles are not, indeed, really connected with each 
other, they do not belong to an Ego, representing the innu¬ 
merable plioenomenal variations of one self. As ice look 
down upon the series, we may observe that groups of 
live, for instance, occur at regular intervals, always pre¬ 
ceded (shall we say?) by groups of three and followed 
by groups of seven. We may believe that whoever 
dropped the marbles, dropped them according to a 
definite plan; and after examining a large number of 
series, we may arrive at the conclusion that they are all 
arranged after the same plan. Now what the psycho¬ 
logical theory should be prepared to answer, is the 
question—what does the last marble know about all the 
rest of the series of which it forms the conclusion ? and 
yet again, what does that last marble know about all those 
series of marbles which have crossed and re-crossed it at 
so many different points ? How can that last marble 
foresee (not what combinations it will itself hereafter 
-enter into, for it will be left where it is, a part of the 
series, but) the future combinations of other marbles in 
all manner of series ? 

But when the external world has been resolved into a 
self-conscious series of states of consciousness, psycho¬ 
logy makes amends by becoming itself a department of 
physiology. “ Mr. Bain,” says Mr. Mill,* in a review of 


# “ Dissertations,” &.C., iii. 117—119. 







344 


JOHN STUART MILL. 


Professor Bain’s “ Pyschology,” “commences liis work 
with a full ancl luminous exposition of what is known of 
the structure and functions of the nervous system. What 
may be called the outward action of the nervous system 
is twofold—sensation and muscular motion ; and one of 
the great physiological discoveries of the present age is, 
that these two functions are performed by means of two 
distinct sets of nerves, in close juxtaposition; one of 
which, if separately severed or paralysed, puts an end to 
sensation in the part of the body which it supplies, but 
leaves the power of motion unimpaired; the other 
destroys the power of motion, but does not affect sensa¬ 
tion. That the central organ of the nervous system, 
the brain, must in some way or other co-operate in all 
sensation, and in all muscular motion except that which 
is actually automatic and mechanical, is also certain ; for 
if the nervous continuity between any part of the body 
and the brain is interrupted, either by the division of 
the nerve, or by pressure on any intermediate portion, 
unfitting it to perform its functions, sensation and 
voluntary motion in that part cease to exist. That the 
memory or thought of a sensation formerly experienced 
has also for its necessary condition a state of the brain, 
and of the same nerves which transmit the sensation 
itself, does not admit of the same direct proof by experi¬ 
ment, but is, at least, a highly probable hypothesis. 
When we consider that in dreams, hallucinations, and 
some highly excited states of the nervous system, the 
idea or remembrance of a sensation is actually mistaken 
for the sensation itself; and also that the idea, when 
vividly excited, not unfrequently produces the same 
effects on the whole bodily frame which the sensation 
would produce, it is hardly possible, in the face of 


JOHN STUART MILL. 


345 


all tills resemblance, to suppose any fundamentally 
different machinery for their production, or any real 
difference in their physical conditions, except one of 
degree. The instrumentality of the brain in thought 
is a more mysterious subject; the evidence is less direct, 
and its interpretation has given rise to some of the 
keenest controversies of our era, controversies yet far 
from being conclusively decided. But the general con¬ 
nexion is attested by many indisputable pathological 
facts : such as, the effect of cerebral inflammation in pro¬ 
ducing delirium; the relation between idiotcy and cerebral 
malformation or disease ; and is confirmed by the entire 
range of comparative anatomy, which shows the intel¬ 
lectual faculties of the various species of animals bearing, 
if not an exact ratio, yet a very unequivocal relation, to 
the development in proportional size, and complexity of 
structure, of the cerebral hemispheres. 

“However imperfect our knowledge may still be in 
regard to this part of the functions of the nervous 
system, it is certain that all our sensations depend upon 
the transmission of some sort of nervous influence 
inward, from the senses to the brain, and that our 
voluntary motions take place hy the transmission of some 
sort of nervous influence outward, from the brain to the 
muscular system ; these two nervous operations being, 
as already observed, the functions of two distinct systems 
of nerves, called respectively the nerves of sensation and 
those of motion. It is now necessary to notice another 
physiological truth, brought to light only within the 
present generation, viz., the different functions of the 
two kinds of matter of which the nervous system is com¬ 
pounded. The nerves consist partly of grey vesicular 
or cell-like matter, partly of white fibrous matter. 


346 


JOHN STUART MILL. 


Physiologists are now of opinion that the function of 
the grey matter is that of originating power, while the 
white fibrous matter is simply a conductor, which 
conveys the influence to and from the brain, and between 
one part of the brain and another. With this physiolo¬ 
gical discovery is connected the first capital improvement 
which Mr. Bain has made in the Association Psychology 
as left by his predecessors.” 

But what have we here ? The active element, the 
spontaneity of the mind itself, is an ultimate mental fact. 
Even a theory of association which omits this element 
is not adequate, on Mr. Mill’s own admission, to account 
for our nature. It is Mr. Bain’s conspicuous merit to 
have included and explained this spontaneity in his 
psycholog}-. And how is this done ? By assuming the 
existence of an external world , viz.: the grey matter of 
the brain ! But it has already been proved that the 
grey matter of the brain is itself only ideal, the result 
of the law of association, a state of consciousness, a 
marble in a series dropped hy some invisible hand, 
having no vital relation to any other marble in the series. 
First, the mind (whatever that may be) gives us the 
grey matter of the brain ; and then, the grey matter 
of the brain gives us spontaneity, the foundation 
of the law of association, the necessary condition of 
mental life. Thus, we arrive at mere nescience. We 
know nothing of body; for granting the existence of an 
ego, or a series of states of consciousness conscious of 
itself as a series; granting spontaneity, the active 
element of the mind; body, including the grey matter 
of the brain, may be a mere possibility of sensations, a 
delusion, a product of association and of the universal 
(but unaccountable) tendency to believe that different 


JOHN STUART MILL. 


347 


and mutually exclusive names stand for realities. Again, 
we know nothing of mind; for granting the existence of 
the non-ego, even immortality and God may he a kind 
of neural phenomena. And again, granting neither 
mind nor matter as a starting point, we cannot make a 
single assertion except a comprehensive confession of 
utter blankness. Meanwhile, M. Comte has written six 
volumes of Positive Philosophy ; Professor Bain two of 
Psychology, and Mr. Mill himself some score on divers 
subjects. These we are to believe, are a veritable product 
of Positioism. u Enfin, dans l’etat positif, l’esprit 
humain reconnaissant Timpossibilite d’obtenirdes notions 
absolues, renonce a cliercher l’origine et la destination 
de l’univers, et a connaitre les causes intimes des 
phenomenes, pour s’attaclier uniquement a decouvrir, 
par F usage hien combine du raisonnement et de 
l’ohservation, leurs lois effectives, c’est-a-dire, leurs 
relations invariables de succession et de similitude. 
L’explication des faits, reduite alors a ses termes reels, 
n’est plus desormais que la liaison etablie entre les divers 
phenomenes particuliers et quelques faits generaux dont 
les progres de la science tendent de plus en plus a 
diminuer le nombre.”*' So M. Comte’s “Tableau 
Synoptique ” exhibits only a list, very much condensed, 
of the cheats practised by non-existent minds upon 
each other, consisting of scientific arrangements of the 
pliocnomena of non-existent matter. We must resign 
knowledge , and build on a hypothesis . But how does it 
come to pass that only one hypothesis will really account 
for all the facts ; the hypothesis that among things name- 
able are the minds which experience, and the bodies 


# Comte. Cours de Philosophic Pos. (2nd Edition, 18G4) i. 9, 10. 



348 


JOHN STUART MILL. 


which occasion, states of consciousness ? Indeed, on 
this basis of pure idealism, an appeal to the universal 
belief of mankind is simply idle. Our fellow-creatures are 
modes of ourselves—states of our own consciousness—if, 
in truth, we ourselves are more than a transient flash of 
consciousness. How can the last marble of one series 
discuss whether the negation of God is or is not conceiv¬ 
able or believable by the ten thousandth marble of 
another series ? Why devote several paragraphs to a 
demolition of Mr. Herbert Spencer’s criterion of truth, 
when a part of the truth to he proved is the existence 
of the very people whose invincible beliefs are to he 
regarded as the best evidence we can secure for our 
own belief either in matter or mind ? “ Everybody 

believes it! ” Nonsense. Prove that there is anybody. 

Mr. Mill’s Exposition of the Philosophy of Comte is 
wonderfully lucid and impartial; and does much to 
relieve that philosophy from misconception, giving the 
explanations necessary to remove the obstacles which 
prevent many competent persons from assenting to it. 
“It is proper to begin,” he says,* “by relieving the 
doctrine from a religious prejudice. The doctrine 
condemns all theological explanations, and replaces 
them or thinks them destined to be replaced by theories 
which take no account of anything but an ascertained 
order of phenomena. It is inferred that if this change 
were completely accomplished, mankind would cease to 
refer the constitution of nature to an intelligent will, or 
to believe at all in a Creator and supreme Governor of 
the world. This supposition is the more natural, as 
M. Comte was avowedly of that opinion. He indeed 


* Auguste Comte (Triibner) 13—15. 



JOHN STUART MILL. 


349 


disclaimed, with some acrimony, dogmatic atheism, and 
even says (in a later work, hut the earliest contains 
nothing at variance with it) that the hypothesis of 
design has much greater verisimilitude than that of a 
blind mechanism. But conjecture, founded on analogy, 
did not seem to him a basis to rest a theory on, in a 
mature state of human intelligence. He deemed all 
real knowledge of a commencement inaccessible to us, 
and the inquiry into it an overpassing of the essential 
limits of our mental faculties. To this point, however, 
those who accept the theory of the progressive stages of 
opinion are not obliged to follow him. The Positive 
mode of thought is not necessarily a denial of the super¬ 
natural ; it merely throws- back that question to. the 
origin of all things. If the universe had a beginning, 
its beginning, by the very conditions of the case, was 
supernatural; the laws of nature cannot account for 
their own origin. The Positive philosopher is free to 
form his own opinion on the subject, according to the 
weight he attaches to the analogies which are called marks 
of design, and to the general traditions of the human race. 
The value of these evidences is indeed a question for 
Positive philosophy, but it is not one upon which Positive 
philosophers must necessarily be agreed. It is one of M. 
Comte’s mistakes that he never allows of open questions. 
Positive Philosophy maintains that within the existing 
order of the universe, or rather of the part of it known 
to us, the direct determining cause of every phenomenon 
is not supernatural, but natural. It is compatible with 
this to believe that the universe was created, and even 
that it is continuously governed by an intelligence, pro¬ 
vided we admit that the intelligent governor adheres to 
fixed laws, which are only modified or counteracted by 


350 


JOHN STUART MILL. 


other laws of the same dispensation, and are never either 
capriciously or providentially departed from. Whoever 
regards all events as parts of a constant order, each one 
being the invariable consequent of some antecedent 
condition, or combination of conditions, accepts fully the 
Positive mode of thought; whether he acknowledges or 
not a universal antecedent on which the whole system 
of nature was originally consequent, and whether that uni¬ 
versal antecedent is conceived as an intelligence or not.” 

This is much less offensive in form, if not in reality, 
than the popular statements of the theological explana¬ 
tion of facts—much less offensive even than the 
Positivism of Mr. G. PI. Lewes. It is plain that here 
though in spite of all consistency, we are dealing with 
real matter and real minds, and their mutual relations 
and phcenomena, and endeavouring to account for them 
and their origin. M. Comte angrily forbids us. Here 
are premisses without conclusion, facts from which 
nothing can be inferred. We may wander among 
phenomena, finding by diverse canons of induction that 
one is a mark of another; but we may not find that 
(or even ask whether) all phenomena together are not a 
mark of something else. Mr. Mill is more generous. 
Theology is not inconsistent with Positivism if God be 
an hypothesis, an impersonation of zero, keeping quite 
out of the way of all our phcenomena. 

But this is not ignorance of God, it is knowledge of 
not-God; it is an excursion into those very regions from 
which we are assured the human mind is for ever 
excluded. To admit God, even hypothetically, is to 
admit One who, being able to produce “Nature,” is 
able to change “Nature;” and of whose unfathomable 
personality what we call nature may be a most transient 


JOHN STUART MILL. 851 

phenomenon. Meanwhile, tradition, more or less trust¬ 
worthy, assures us that among recorded phenomena are 
some that could not he accounted for by the ordinary 
antecedents. Why should Positivism gag the mouth of 
history ? 

In truth, Positivism, as expounded by its chief 
prophets, is undoubtedly incompatible with the belief in 
a living God who can interfere, and has sometimes 
actually interfered, with the customary series of phe¬ 
nomena. Nevertheless, outside its proper boundaries, 
in its playground, or in its Holy of Holies, it may have 
not only a morality, but a religion. M. Comte’s ritual 
and dogma are, indeed, most melancholy;* but even 
Mr. Mill can understand a religion without a God. 
Nor is his religion the least noble of the many proofs 
of the greatness and purity of his soul. 

“When we say that M. Comte has erected his philo¬ 
sophy into a religion, the word religion must not be 
understood in its ordinary sense. He made no change 
in the purely negative attitude which he maintained 
towards theology: his religion is without a God. In 
saying this, we have done enough to induce nine-tenths 
of all readers, at least in our own country, to avert tlieir 
faces and close their ears. To have no religion, though 
scandalous enough, is an idea they are partly used to; 
but to have no God, and fo talk of religion, is to their 
feelings at once an absurdity and an impiety. Of the 
remaining tenth, a great proportion, perhaps, will turn 
away from anything which calls itself by the name of 
religion at all. Between the two it is difficult to find an 


* “ Others may laugh, but we could far rather weep at this 
melancholy decadence of a great intellect.”— Auguste Comte, 109. 



352 


JOHN STUART MILL. 


audience who can be induced to listen to M. Comte 
without an insurmountable prejudice. But, to be just 
to any opinion, it ought to be considered, not exclusively 
from an opponent’s point of view, but from that of the 
mind which propounds it. Though conscious of being 
in an extremely small minority, w r e venture to think that 
a religion may exist without belief in a God; and that a 
religion without a God may be, even to Christians, an 
instructive and profitable object of contemplation. 

“ What, in truth, are the conditions necessary to con¬ 
stitute a religion ? There must be a creed, or conviction 
claiming authority over the whole of human life; a 
belief, or set of beliefs, deliberately adopted, respecting 
human destiny and duty, to which the believer inwardly 
acknowledges that all his actions ought to be subordinate. 
Moreover, there must be a sentiment connected with 
this creed, or capable of being invoked by it, sufficiently 
powerful to give it, in fact, the authority over human 
conduct to which it lays claim in theoiy. It is a great 
advantage (though not absolutely indispensable) that 
this sentiment should crystallize, as it were, round a 
concrete object; if possible a really existing one, though, 
in all the more important cases, only ideally present. 
Such an object Theism and Christianity offer to the 
believer; but the condition may be fulfilled, if not in a 
manner strictly equivalent, by another object. It has 
been said that whoever believes in ‘ The Infinite nature 
of Duty,’ even if he believes in nothing else, is religious. 
M. Comte believes in what is meant by the infinite 
nature of duty, but he refers the obligations of duty, as 
well as all sentiments of devotion, to a concrete object, 
at once ideal and real; the Human Race, conceived as a 
continuous whole, including the past, the present, and 


JOHN STUART MILL. 


358 


the future. This great collective existence, this “Grand 
Etre,” as he terms it, though the feelings it can excite 
are necessarily very different from those which direct 
themselves towards an ideally perfect Being, has, as he 
forcibly urges, this advantage in respect to us, that it 
really needs our services, which Omnipotence cannot, in 
any genuine sense of the term, he supposed to do ; and 
M. Comte says, that assuming the existence of a 
Supreme Providence (which he is as far from denying as 
affirming), the best, and even the only way in which we 
can rightly worship or serve Him, is- by doing our 
utmost to love and serve that other Great Being, whose 
inferior Providence has bestowed on us all the benefits 
we owe to the labours and virtues of former generations. 
It may not he consonant to usage to call this a religion; 
hut the term so applied has a meaning, and one which 
is not adequately expressed by any other word. Candid 
persons of all creeds may he willing to admit that if a 
person has an ideal object, his attachment and sense of 
duty towards which are able to control and discipline all 
his other sentiments and propensities, and prescribe to 
him a rule of life, that person has a religion; and 
though every one naturally prefers his own religion to 
any other, all must admit that if the object of this 
attachment and of this feeling of duty is the aggregate 
of our fellow-creatures, this religion of the infidel cannot 
in honesty and conscience be called an intrinsically bad 
one. Many, indeed, may be unable to believe that this 
object is capable of gathering round it feelings sufficiently 
strong; but this is exactly the point on which a doubt 
can hardly remain in an intelligent reader of M. Comte; 
and we join with him in contemning, as equally irra¬ 
tional and mean, the conception of human nature as 


354 


JOHN STUART MILL. 


incapable of giving its love and devoting its existence to 
any object which cannot afford in exchange an eternity 
of personal enjoyment.”* 

This is precisely in harmony with much else in Mr. 
Mill’s writings, as for instance, the conclusion of his 
inaugural address to the students of Aberdeen :—“ I do 
not attempt to instigate you by the prospect of direct 
rewards, either earthly or heavenly; the less we think 
about being rewarded, in either way, the better for us. 
But there is one reward that will not fail you, and which 
may be called disinterested, because it is not a con¬ 
sequence, but is inherent in the very fact of deserving 
it; the deeper and more varied interest jt)u will feel in 
life, which will give it tenfold its value, and a value 
which will last to the end. All merely personal objects 
grow less valuable as we advance in life ; this not only 
endures but increases.” f And yet more, the grand 
burst of righteous indignation which all manner of 
Pharisees mistook for blasphemy, in his examination of 
Mr. Mansel’s “ Theological Application of Sir W. 
Hamilton’s Philosophy:”—“If instead of the glad 
tidings that there exists a Being in whom all the 
excellences which the highest human mind can conceive 
exist in a degree inconceivable to us, I am informed that 
the world is ruled by a being whose attributes are 
infinite, but what they are we cannot learn, nor what are 
the principles of his government, except that 4 the 
highest human morality which we are capable of con¬ 
ceiving ’ does not sanction them : convince me of it and 
I will bear my fate as I may. But when I am told that 
I must believe this, and at the same time call this 
being by the names that express and affirm the highest 


* Comte, 132—135. 


t Pp., 98, 99. 






JOHN STUART MILL. 


355 


human morality, I say in plain terms that I will not. 
Whatever power such a being may have over me, there 
is one thing which he shall not do, he shall not compel 
me to worship him. I will call no being good, who is 
not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my fellow- 
creatures ; and if such a being can sentence me to hell 
for not so calling him, to hell I will go.” * 

Nothing is more obvious than that a religion which 
consists chiefly in a skilful calculation of the rewards of 
virtue is a mere form of selfishness; and such teaching 
as Mr. Mill’s may be heartily welcomed even by those 
who are wholly unable to reconcile it with “ Utilitarian” 
morality. Nor is Mr. Mill’s protest against pious greedi¬ 
ness any the less necessary because the popular appeals 
of religious teachers are so often addressed to that very 
selfishness which it must be a chief triumph of any 
religion w'orth having utterly to destroy. But both 
religion and morality seem to require a far surer founda¬ 
tion than has been laid for them in Mr. Mill’s philosophy. 
For that philosophy excludes, not as denied but as 
unknown, even a single real mind; and if a whole 
human race may be assumed, why not have a God as 
w T ell as a religion ? For “ God” is not necessarily that 
meddlesome disorder which is assumed in what M. 
Comte, with most offensive infelicity, calls “ the theo- 
logical ” mode of philosophizing. Men as familiar as M. 
Comte with the natural sciences are nevertheless believers 
in God ; and by no means feel compelled to assume that 
He will be for ever altering His plans. Nor do they 
account for customary phenomena by the hypothesis of a 
direct interference, rather than the operation of a fixed 


* “ Examination,” pp., 102, 103. 
A A 2 





356 


JOHN STUART MILL. 


rule—wliicli rule, however, is itself the expression of 
a purpose that we have no reason to believe is necessarily 
unalterable.* The more we know of phenomena, espe¬ 
cially the more we know of the order of phenomena, the 
less possible is it to account for all facts and all their 
mutual relations without a cause beyond and apart from 
phenomena. For what we know there may exist innu¬ 
merable ‘ 4 natures, ” innumerable series of phenomena, 
in kind and in order wholly different from that series with 
which we are familiar. Nor is it possible for us to 
determine which of these natures is the better and which 
is the less good; nor again, whether innumerable 
changes might not be better than the permanence of any 
one series of phenomena. Indeed, it seems highly 
probable that if there really be a God, and if nature be 
so orderly that by means of its orderliness God Himself 
may be forgotten, and even plausibly denied, it would be 
well that some interruption of the ordinary series should 
actually take place. So long as the reasonable expecta¬ 
tions which God Himself has justified are habitually 
satisfied, or even so long as their occasional disappoint¬ 
ment is fairly compensated, it may often be well to 
depart from an order of procedure which, if entirely 
invariable, might be supposed to be necessary. 

At any rate, it is tolerably plain that M. Comte would 
never have arrived at a religion unless he had met with 
“une angelique influence,” and experienced “ une incom¬ 
parable passion privee.” It is easy enough to deny a 
God, and even to resolve our own personality into an 
unconnected series of states of consciousness, until some 
living being distinct from ourselves presents to us a new 
manifestation of the external world. Angelic influences 


* See Martineau’s “Essays” (Triibner, 1800), pp. 180, 181. 



JOHN SIUART MILL. 


357 


cannot easily be explained away, and the belief in any 
real existence whatever, were it only the existence of an 
old rag, contains within itself the possibility of the 
existence of an immeasurable universe. What would 
M. Comte have cared for the extinct members of the 
human race if there had not been among them the 
incomparable Madame Clotilde de Vaux? Over so 
narrow a bridge he found it easy to cross into the bound¬ 
less misty region, liot of religion but of fanaticism and 
superstition. 

And in truth, devotion to the whole human race can 
only be justifiable if there be a human race, and if 
devotion to that human race be reasonable; otherwise 
such devotion must at least interfere with devotion to 
our own selves ; and self-sacrifice, the mere neglect of 
our own comfort for the sake of no higher good, is a 
form of madness. Why not say to M. Comte, “ This 
human race that you would have us live for has no 
existence whatever; it is one of those transient states 
of consciousness which, immersed as we are in un¬ 
fathomable delusions, we cannot help calling yours, but 
neither you nor we exist; and all human language, 
all human affection, all human action is based upon 
nothing.” Would Mr. Mill advise us to leave the re¬ 
ligion of heathens alone because it includes a creed and 
a sentiment ? Would he not tell us that if the creed be 
false we are bound to destroy it, and if the sentiment 
be irrational we are bound to desecrate it ? What can 
any reasonable being make of M. Comte’s religion? To 
a Christian it is a kind of blasphemous idolatry, and to 
a Positivist it is a melancholy absurdity. 

It has been said that “ whoever believes in the infinite 
nature of duty, even if he believes in nothing else, is 


358 


JOHN STUART MILL. 


religious.” But what can the infinite nature of duty he? 
M. Comte refers the obligations of duty, as well as 
all sentiments of devotion, to a concrete object, at once 
ideal and real; the human race, conceived as a con¬ 
tinuous whole, including the past, the present, and the 
future. But what is the use of referring duty to a 
concrete whole if there be no concrete whole ? And 
may not the individual repudiate his obligations to 
the concrete whole even if it exists ? A is required to 
sacrifice his own interests to all the other letters of the 
alphabet, either jointly or severally; he wants to know 
why, and he is told that it is a much grander and more 
refined sort of happiness to care impartially for himself 
and Z, than to care partially for himself alone. But 
supposing he does not think so; supposing he does not 
care in the least for Z, and would gladly sacrifice him 
to everlasting perdition for one thrill of personal enjoy¬ 
ment : why not sacrifice Z ? A utilitarianism that ends 
in this precept, “ Seek always your own happiness, even 
though you should have to sacrifice for it the happiness 
of everybody else,” is intelligible and consistent; but a 
utilitarianism that ends in the precept, “ Sacrifice your 
own happiness whenever it would interfere with the 
happiness of your fellow creatures and of the whole 
human race,” is preposterous and suicidal. It is easy 
enough to believe that Mr. Mill would rather go to hell 
than do a wrong action; hut the old-fashioned utilita¬ 
rianism, which alone is logical and consistent, would 
only think him a fool for his heroism. Very few, then, 
will he able to perceive how a Positivist can find any 
infinite nature of duty to serve as a foundation either for 
religion or morals. 

But whatever the ultimate principles may be which 


JOHN STUART MILL. 


359 


Mr. Mill accepts, there can be no doubt whatever that in 
“ the middle ground of human thought below the primary 
data which reason must assume,” he has accomplished 
more than almost any other living man. His “ Inductive 
Logic ” is by far the best existing guide in the study of 
plioenomena, whether there he any external world or not. 
Whether or not happiness he the sole criterion of morality, 
he has directed our attention with special care to the 
fact that a selfish man is a bad man. Omitting the 
primary data, Mr. Mill’s conclusions are all on the right 
side ; and not only so, hut expressed with singular dear¬ 
ness and infectious enthusiasm. “ I must again repeat,” 
he says,* “ what the assailants of utilitarianism seldom 
have the justice to acknowledge, that the happiness 
which forms the utilitarian standard of what is right in 
conduct is not the agent’s own happiness, but that of 
all concerned. As between his own happiness and that 
of others, utilitarianism requires him to be as strictly 
impartial as a disinterested and benevolent spectator. 
In the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth, we read the 
complete spirit of the ethics of utility. To do as you 
would he done by, and to love your neighbour as yourself, 
constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality. 
As the means of making the nearest approach to this 
ideal, utility would enjoin, first, that laws and social 
arrangements should place the happiness, or (as speaking 
practically it may be called) the interest, of every indivi¬ 
dual, as nearly as possible in harmony with the interest 
of the whole ; and secondly, that education and opinion, 
which have so vast a power over human character, 
should so use that power as to establish in the mind of 
every individual an indissoluble association between his 


* “ Utilitarianism,” pp. 24, 25. 




3G0 


JOHN STUART MILL. 


own happiness and the practice of such modes of conduct, 
negative and positive, as regard for the universal happi¬ 
ness prescribes ; so that not only he may he unable to 
conceive the possibility of happiness to himself, con¬ 
sistently with conduct opposed to the general good, but 
also that a direct impulse to promote the general good 
may be in every individual one of the habitual motives 
of action, and the sentiments connected therewith may 
fill a large and prominent place in every human being’s 
sentient existence.” Nay, he holds that virtue itself is 
to be desired disinterestedly for itself; is capable of 
becoming to the individual a good in itself, without 
looking to any end beyond it,—desirable in itself, even 
though in the individual instance it should not produce 
those other desirable consequences which it tends to 
produce, and on account of which (in Mr. Mill’s judg¬ 
ment) it is held to be virtue.* What can w T e need better 
than this ? 

Perhaps the most perfect of Mr. Mill’s works is his 
“ Political' Economy ; ” a mine of treasure which cannot 
be too carefully explored by those who w T ould understand 
the social problems of the day, or help in their practical 
solution. “ Those branches of politics,” he says to the 
students of the University of Aberdeen,! “ or of the krws 
of social life in which there exists a collection of facts or 
thoughts sufficiently sifted and methodized to form the 
beginning of a science, should be taught ex professo. 
Among the chief of these is Political Economy—the 
sources and conditions of wealth, and material prosperity 
for aggregate bodies of human beings. This study 
approaches nearer to the rank of a science, in the sense in 


'* “ Utilitarianism,” pp. 52—54. t “ Inaugural Address,” 09, 70. 




JOHN STUART MILL. 


861 


wliicli w r e apply that name to the physical sciences, than 
anything else connected with politics yet does. I need not 
enlarge on the important lessons which it affords for the 
guidance of life, and for the estimation of laws and 
institutions, or on the necessity of knowing all that it 
can teach in order to have true views of the course of 
human affairs, or form plans for their improvement which 
will stand actual trial. The same persons who cry 
down Logic will generally warn you against Political 
Econonty. It is unfeeling, they will tell you. It 
recognizes unpleasant facts. For my part the most un¬ 
feeling thing I know of, is the law of gravitation; it 
breaks the neck of the best and most amiable person 
without scruple, if he forgets for a single moment to give 
heed to it. The winds and waves too are very unfeeling. 
Would you advise those who go to sea to deny the winds 
and w T aves ; or to make use of them, and find the means 
of guarding against their dangers ? My advice to you 
is to study the great writers on Political Economy, and 
hold firmly by whatever in them you find true; and 
depend upon it that if you are not selfish or hard- 
hearted already, Political Economy will not make 
you so.” 

It is scarcely possible to conceive of a sillier objection 
to the study of Political Economy, one more completely 
without foundation in fact, than the objection that it is 
unfeeling. If the objection were made^ against most 
forms of modern philanthropy, it w r ould have some 
w r eiglit, for the most deliberate cruelty could scarcely be 
more mischievous than the well-meant endeavours of 
many benevolent people to benefit their fellow-creatures ; 
unfortunately too, the mischief is often consecrated by 
religious associations. The most offensive part of 


362 


JOHN STUART MILL. 


Political Economy is that which has often been stigma¬ 
tized as Malthusianism. The wages of the labouring 
class must depend partly upon the amount of capital 
which will be employed in the purchase of labour ; and 
partly upon the number of individuals among whom that 
amount of capital will he distributed. It is conceivable 
enough that the wealth of the rich might simply be 
stolen from them, that they might he compelled to 
employ more labourers, or to give higher wages; hut 
even that would be only an iniquitous mode of increasing 
the capital employed in the purchase of labour. But if 
only a hundred pounds a week are to he spent upon a 
hundred workmen, paid at the same rate, any child can 
calculate what each man’s share will he ; and if the 
number of workmen he doubled, any child can see that 
the wages of each man must he diminished by half. 
There are two ways, therefore, of increasing w T ages : 
1st, increase directly or indirectly the capital to be 
employed in the purchase of labour without increasing 
the number of labourers; or, 2ndly, diminish directly 
or indirectly the number of persons among whom this 
wage-fund will have to be distributed without diminishing 
the fund itself. There are many ways of diminishing the 
number of human beings; or, at least, of preventing their 
too rapid increase. They may, however, all be reduced 
to two classes, preventive or destructive. The first of 
these modes is the one habitually adopted by the upper 
and middle classes of society; the second is habitually 
adopted by the labouring classes. If a young man of 
good family has only just enough to live on, that is to 
say, just enough to live on without sinking into a lower 
stratum of society, he never dreams of encumbering 
himself with a wife and a large family; he remains 


JOHN STUART MILL. 


36a 


unmarried, just as many people who prefer riding to 
walking manage to exist without a carriage and pair. 
If a working man has only just enough to live upon, he 
marries at the first practicable moment a girl who has 
nothing whatever to live upon, and then they have a 
number of children who must also take their share of 
the scanty pittance of their father. In times of scarcity 
the father’s wages are often reduced, or he may remain 
out of work for many weeks in succession ; then the 
wife and children have, at first not enough, and ulti¬ 
mately nothing at all to eat. Of course they get ill; if 
the distress continue long the weakest of them die—and 
so far as that family is concerned the number of indivi¬ 
duals among whom the wage-fund must he distributed, 
is diminished by the destructive mode. It is exactly this 
sort of misery that Political Economy would prevent. 
The question is not this : is matrimony a divine institu¬ 
tion ? nor this; are you very much in love ? nor this ; 
why should you he deprived of those natural pleasures 
which are enjoyed by the rich? The real question is far 
less romantic, and, moreover, far more easily answered. 
You know exactly what your income is, can you afford 
to keep a wife and six children ? What’s the use of 
being very much in love, if you have not a bread-loaf. 

Unfortunately, there is among working people, as 
among all other people, a large amount of vice; and 
good men, knowing well the unspeakable worth of the 
legal safeguard of marriage, imagine that for the pre¬ 
vention of vice, marriages among the poor should not only 
he facilitated but greatly encouraged. To all such 
persons, I venture to recommend a very careful study of 
the thirteenth chapter of the second book of Mr. Mill’s 
“ Political Economy.” “Poverty, like most social evils,” 


3G4 


JOHN STUART MILL. 


he says,* “ exists because men follow their brute in¬ 
stincts without clue consideration. But society is 
possible, precisely because man is not necessarily a 
brute. Civilization, in every one of its aspects, is a 
struggle against the animal instincts. Over some even 
of the strongest of them it has shown itself capable of 
acquiring abundant control. It has artificialized large 
portions of mankind to such an extent, that of many of 
their most natural inclinations they have scarcely a 
vestige or a remembrance left. If it has not brought the 
instinct of population under as much restraint as is 
needful, w 7 e must remember that it has never seriously 
tried. What efforts it has made have mostly been in 
the contrary direction. Religion, morality, and states¬ 
manship have vied with one another in incitements to 
marriage, and to the multiplication of the species, so it 
be but in wedlock. Religion has not even yet dis¬ 
continued its encouragements. The Roman Catholic 
clergy (of any other clergy it is unnecessary to speak, 
since no other have any considerable influence over 
the poorer classes) everywhere think it their duty to 
promote marriage in order to prevent fornication. 
There is still in many minds a strong religious prejudice 
against the true doctrine. The rich, provided the con¬ 
sequences do not touch themselves, think it impugns the 
wisdom of Providence to suppose that misery can result 
from the operation of a natural propensity; the poor 
think that ‘ God never sends mouths but he sends 
meat.’ No one would guess from the language 
of either, that man had any voice or choice in the 
matter. So complete is the confusion of ideas on the 
whole subject, owing in a great degree to the mystery 

# “Political Economy,” i. 455—457 (see the whole chapter). 




JOHN STUART MILL. 


365 


in winch it is shrouded by a spurious delicacy; which 
prefers that right and wrong should be mismeasured and 
confounded on one of the subjects most momentous to 
human welfare, rather than that the subject should be 
freely spoken of and discussed. People are little aware 
of the cost to mankind of this scrupulosity of speech. 
The diseases of society can, no more than corporal 
maladies, be prevented or cured without being spoken 
about in plain language. All experience shows that the 
mass of mankind never judge of moral questions for 
themselves, never see anything to be right or wrong 
until they have been frequently told it; and who tells 
them that they have any duties in the matter in question, 
wdiile they keep within matrimonial limits ? Who 
meets with the smallest condemnation, or rather who 
does not meet with sympathy and benevolence, for any 
amount of evil he may have brought upon himself and 
those dependant on him, by this species of incontinence.” 
“ One cannot wonder that silence on this great depart¬ 
ment of human duty should produce unconsciousness of 
moral obligations, when it produces oblivion of physical 
facts. That it is possible to delay marriage, and to live 
in abstinence while unmarried, most people are willing 
to allow; but when persons are once married, the idea, 
in this country, never seems to enter any one’s mind 
that having or not having a family, or the number of 
which it shall consist, is at all amenable to their own 
control. One would imagine that children were rained 
down upon married people direct from heaven, without 
their being art or part in the matter; that it was really, 
as the common phrases have it, God’s will and not their 
own, which decided the numbers of their offspring.” 

Whether or not the cruel folly of bringing into the 


366 


JOHN STUART MILL. 


world more people than one can keep is at all lessened 
or mitigated by the performance of a preliminary religious 
ceremony, may be left for the decision of casuists. 
Political Economy, so far at least as the theory of wages 
is concerned, has nothing whatever to do either with 
the religious or the legal sanctions of marriage; it is 
•concerned only with the physical results. Married 
people without children can live just as comfortably as 
unmarried people without children . 

That the wealth of a country like England is neither 
wisely nor justly distributed, political economists would 
be the first to admit; indeed, they are the only people 
who understand the matter at all. To amend the laws 
and to improve the social condition of the country, 
would be, indeed, an immeasurable benefit, not only to 
the working classes but to public morality; but to act as 
if a bad law did not exist, is an extremely different 
thing from mending it. It may be true that the wealth 
of England should be so distributed that every honest 
working man should earn enough wage, not only to 
support a wife and feed an average family, but also to 
educate them and to secure some fair amount of leisure 
for the culture of his own mind. But if the wealth of 
England be not distributed after that manner, what is 
the use of acting as if it were ? If a man who deserves 
a hundred shillings, only gets twenty, what will a 
butcher or a baker care for his deserts ? The real 
hindrances in the way of an equitable distribution of 
wealth, are, among other things, the laws which regulate 
the descent and transfer of real property, popular 
ignorance, the profuse and joyless waste of the unpro¬ 
ductive classes of society, and the everlasting race for 
riches, the treading upon one another’s heels, the keeping 


JOHN STUAHT MILL. 


367 


up appearances, which has in fact turned almost all 
human life into a lie. And yet, the very people who 
accuse political economy of being unfeeling, are the 
very people who are the main supporters of nearly every 
social abuse. All the church property in the kingdom, 
or at any rate by far the largest part of it, is a conse¬ 
crated justification of perhaps the most reckless absurdity 
of which a nation can he guilty. * And what have the 
philanthropists, excepting those who were more or less 
political economists also, done for popular education ? 
Left it to the clergy; a body of men who have probably 
with a sublime self-denial, spent fifty times as much on 
education out of their own pockets as the present 
(feneration of Churchmen has contributed to the stipends 
of the clergy. But notwithstanding the extreme bene¬ 
volence of the clergy, any public education entrusted 
solely to their management will be limited on the one 
side by Anglican orthodoxy, and on the other by the 
opinions and prejudices of country squires. Now 
Anglican orthodoxy excludes Dissenters from receiving 
any education; and the opinions and prejudices of 
country squires limit the education actually given to 
the mere rudiments even of the most necessary branches 
of knowledge. We are all amazed at the folly of strikes, 
the injustice and wastefulness of trades’ unions, and 
the like. What excellent advice Lord Derby can give to 
working men—as thus, at Manchester :— 

“ I warn as a friend, as an earnest and sincere friend—and, 
speaking from the deepest conviction, I warn the working classes 
not to be led away by the flattering delusion of men who will tell 
them that they can induce Parliament to pass a measure of 


* See “ Dissertations,” i., 1—41. 



368 


JOHN STUART MILL. 


exceptional legislation for tlieir special and immediate benefit. 
They cannot induce, I hope, any Parliament to pass any such 
measure; and if such a measure were to he passed, the workmen 
would find, to their misfortune, that it was the greatest injury 
that could be done them. I mean a measure attempting to 
regulate the rate of wages. To interfere between labour and 
capital is beyond the legislation of any Parliament; and indeed it 
would be in short only to lead Parliament to adopt such a course 
of legislation as has been recommended in some of the b} r e laws 
we have heard so much of of late in connection with various trades’ 
unions in the country. Don’t let me be misunderstood. I am 
no adversary or opponent of trades’ unions. I think that confined 
to their legitimate object they are useful and salutary instru¬ 
ments for maintaining the rights of the labouring classes. 

“ I say that even strikes, objectionable as they are in principle, 
and injurious as they are to the working classes, are not an 
illegitimate or illegal mode of proceeding; I say that if capital 
and labour cannot agree together, the only mode of bringing them 
together is the absence of one or the other—the capital to employ 
the labour, or the labourer to give the capital. 

####### 

“It is a great disadvantage to the honest man who is only 
desirous of making the most of his industry, for such a man to be 
prohibited from turning his own skill to his advantage. Can 
there be a greater restriction upon the labouring man? What is 
the capital of the labouring man ? It is his labour; and really if 
these societies are to prevent a man from making the most of his 
labour it is simply to put the idle, the indolent and the worthless 
upon the same footing as the intelligent and industrious, and to 
bring all labour down to a dead level, and to increase the expense 
of all work that depends on that labour, not only by increased 
wages, but also by the uncertainty which prevails on the part of 
every contractor as to his power of executing a contract, and the 
necessity of charging higher prices, because he may be deprived 
of the services of those upon whom he relies. 

“ I say that trades’ unions go beyond their limits when they 
agree not only themselves not to work, but to prevent and intimi¬ 
date other persons from working. For my own part, looking to the 


JOHN STUART MILL. 


369 


public and private interests of tlie members, I cannot for the life 
of me understand how English workmen, entitled to make the 
most of their own industry and science, can submit to the tyranny 
under which they are groaning. Gentlemen, the whole course of 
our legislation for the last, I won’t say how many years, has been 
a protest against class legislation. It has been an argument in 
favour of the free admission of all foreign goods ; an argument in 
favour of free trade; an argument opposed to all class protection. 
What would you say if in this city of Manchester Government 
were to impose, as in Continental cities, an octroi duty on the 
importation of every article of agricultural produce ? The whole 
city would be in an uproar ; and yet you submit to the bye-laws 
of associations which say that not only shall a tax be paid, but 
not a single brick shall be laid in Manchester that is imported— 
not from a foreign country—from beyond a single district—even 
beyond the breadth of a canal. We are speaking in the Free 
Trade Hall. What do you say of bye-laws which say that not a 
stone shall be worked in a quarry to save an enormous additional 
amount of labour in carting it to the place where it is to be 
deposited, but that it shall be brought in bulk and worked by the 
workmen, and if it should have been worked in the quarry, then the 
farce is to be gone through of working it again by workmen in 
Manchester? If this system is to prevail, what is to become of 
our threshing-machines and our steam ploughs, our mowing and 
reaping machines ? You would have to resort to your old flail 
and other obsolete implements, and in manufactures to old hand- 
loom weaving; you would have to do away with the power-loom 
and all those old inventions of genius which, while they have 
multiplied to an indefinite amount the productive capital of the 
country, have at the same time multiplied to an extent almost 
equally indefinite the amount and number of persons employed. 
I say that the British workman would do well seriously to consider 
these things.” 

This is very admirable advice ; but it will not be 
appreciated, it will not even be understood, by the grown¬ 
up men to whom it is addressed for tlie first time. 
Nobody knows better than the great Conservative leader, 
that the advantages of free trade are far from obvious , 


B B 


870 


JOHN STUART MILL. 


whether free trade be in labour or in corn. If men are 
to be brought to believe that itis impossible for them by 
mere combination or intimidation permanently to raise 
the rate of wages, this result can only be secured by 
careful education ; and all education, the effects of which 
are to last through life, must begin in childhood. How 
many schools then are there under the control of the 
clergy and squires in which even the simplest rudiments 
of political economy are taught to the children ? It 
may indeed be urged, that the children of the wealthier 
classes are left in equal ignorance of what every one 
ought to know. So much the worse for the future of 
England. But, nevertheless, the danger in the latter 
case is by no means so great as in the former. The 
interests of the wealthier classes are obviously as well as 
really inseparable from order and obedience to the laws ; 
whereas the interests of the working classes are often 
apparently though not really hindered and sacrificed by 
the laws and usages of society. Everybody with three 
hundred a year w r ould expect to lose by a revolution; 
whereas nothing would be easier than to convince the 
majority of working men that they w r ould be sure to 
gain. Education is the less necessary for the wealthier 
classes because prejudice and selfishness secure their 
loyalty. But the loyalty and order of the working 
classes can be secured by education alone. 

It may very safely be affirmed of Mr. Mill’s writings 
that their practical conclusions are almost invariably 
sound and noble. They furnish a splendid discipline 
both for the intellect and conscience ; and they are works 
of which it may truly be said that no educated English¬ 
man can afford to be ignorant. 



UNWIN BROTHERS, PRINTERS, BUCKLERSBUUY LONDON 





























































